Patrick Rolf, Sweden | 2025 World Barista Championship: Semi-finals transcript

Cube, please. Perfect. Time. Art artificially flavored food and beverages and highly processed are everywhere. Walk into any supermarket and you're going to find it. And over the last few years, these trends have crept into the coffee world. And let's face it, they're here to stay. And that's okay. But I will take you in a different direction towards a small producers that loves the flavors of coffee and like me sees beauty in the limitations of it.

I want to take us all on a journey towards reclaiming coffee flavors. Now, why is this so important? Well, it's because coffee flavors, just like you guys, are perfect just the way you are. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to innovate and improve, but we can't lose ourselves and coffee flavors in the process. So today I want to share three of my favorite coffee flavor expressions by serving two of my favorite coffees.

I'm going to start by brewing the shots for my signature beverage. And here I'm using the same coffee as for my espresso course. The espresso course is going to represent the floral and citrusy coffee flavors. And the best floral and citrusy coffee flavors we're gonna find in Panama, more specifically up at 2,000 meters in Vulcan at the Fina Sofia Farm. Here, producer David and his team have done an extraordinary job with this washed processed geisha varietal.

My geisha varietal has a wide range of stone fruits and beautiful florality to it. It's been handpicked at perfect ripeness, left in tanks overnight to rest before it's been depulled and put on raised beds for a total of 24 days. The high altitude local teroir and expert processing generates this amazing citrusy quality to this coffee that I just love. I remember tasting coffees like this many years ago when I first started in the coffee industry, but over the last few years, they've been so hard to find, somehow lost in the noise of all of these other coffees.

So, when I tasted this coffee for the first time earlier this year, I knew that I had to share it with you. Now, we're going to start by straining the espresso for the signature beverage, and we'll get back to it later on. For now, I want to walk you through how I'm brewing these coffees. Firstly, we're going to rest the coffees for a total of four weeks. This opens up the flavor compounds in the coffee and make these delicate floral and citrusy flavor notes easier to extract.

Secondly, I'm really quickly chilling the base of my PA filters. That allows me to maintain more of those beautiful citrus notes and floral qualities as a higher temperature sometimes dissipate some of those complex flavor notes. And chilling is a bit of a trend today cuz I'm chilling down all of the cups that I'm using for service again to maintain more of that amazing complexity and fresh fruit quality that I love so much.

The next step is the distribution of my coffee. I'm using a needle tool to distribute my coffee horizontally in the basket. After that, I'm using an innovative pulls tool that sends pulses to the coffee and allows me to distribute the coffee also vertically. The combination of this gives me perfect control over how the water flows to the coffee and I can extract more of those complex flavor notes. I'm dozing for my recipe today 19 gram in for a total of 50 g out.

This ratio allows me to extract more flavor notes as I'm pushing more water through the coffee, especially those amazing floral qualities. Today I have a slightly longer contact time to improve that body and mouth feel. This is also something that we took in consideration when we roasted this coffee. Slow soak in the beginning, higher end temperature at the end of the roast together with the plenty of development time generates this amazing texture to the coffee that really supports my flavor notes.

Now, when I serve you this espresso, I kindly ask you to please hold off on tasting until I give you further instructions. For now, please note down as taste descriptors. We are looking for flavor notes of bergammont, apricots, and orange blossom. We're looking for an after taste highlighting that beautiful orange blossom and black tea. For tactile qualities, we have a low to medium silky body with this beautiful zesty finish.

Now for tasting protocol, I'd like you to start by taking a sip of the water in front of you. Then take a spoon and stir four times in a circular motion. And please enjoy this floral and citrusy coffee flavor expression. [applause] Now it's time for our second coffee flavor expression and the milk course. And this time it's all about those beautiful berry-like coffee flavors. and the best berry-like flavors we're going to find in Kenya, more specifically at the Kama Vindi Farm and producer Peter.

Earlier this year, I asked Peter to single out his SL28 variety specifically for this opportunity and the result is amazing. This washprocessed SL28 variety has been handpicked at perfect ripeness before it's left in tanks for two nights to rest, later depuled, graded in water channels, and then put on raised beds for a total of 12 days. The SL88 variety generates this amazing berry-like quality to my coffee. The high altitude of 1600 m alongside the red clay soil of Kenya generates this natural flavor intensity.

Kenya by far has the most natural flavor intensity out of all the countries. This is why I chose to pair it with milk. And the milk that I'm using is a full fat lactoseree milk that's sweeter due to the separation of sugar chain. And today we've added 10% of a macadamia nut milk. This is just to support the sweetness. It doesn't interfere with those beautiful coffee flavors. Now, when I serve you, please hold off on tasting as we're all tasting together.

Please note down as taste descriptors. We are going to look for blackberries, followed by raspberries and vanilla. We're looking for an aftertaste highlighting blackberry and vanilla. As I said before, those beautiful berry notes is all of that amazing SR28 variety. That beautiful vanilla finish is a result of the mix of the macadamia milk and a more developed roast profile. I'm dozing 25 gram of espresso to 40 gram of milk.

And because the cups are slightly chilled, we're getting more of those beautiful aromatics. Now, for tasting protocol, please start by taking a sip of the water in front of you. Then take your spoon and start four times in a circular motion on the top of the beverage. And then please enjoy this berry-like coffee flavor expression. Thank you very much. Now, For our final serving here today, it's all about those tropical coffee flavors.

And we're going to bring those out by using four shots of that beautiful Fina Sofia espresso. Only this time, I pushed it through a paper filter. And this is important because it highlights those amazing citrus quality of the espresso and clarifies them. And this is what we're using as a base for this drink. To those beautiful citrus notes, we're adding 12 grams of an apple cordial. The apple cordial is made by taking one kilos of apples, chopping them in small pieces, and putting 1 kilos of sugar on top of it.

I put them in the fridge for a total of 7 days. And the result here is that these beautiful malic notes and sugary notes together with that citrus notes of the pineapple of the citrus generates new notes of pineapple. The next ingredient is 12 g of a passion fruit juice. This I'm adding in two different ways. First, directly into the mixture. Passion fruit juice has this beautiful tangy tropicalness and sweetness to it which I really like.

The passion fruit juice is made by taking one kilos of passion fruit, scooping out the inside, putting it through a juicer, and then filtrating the liquid. Very easy to do. Now, what's interesting with this is that together with my final ingredient, orange blossom water, six drops, we're going to get new flavor notes and mango. The orange blossom on itself also generates this amazing orange like quality to this beverage.

Now, as I said, we're adding the passion fruit juice in two ways. I've created a foam right here in front of you. The way you do that is you take 100 grams of the juice, put one gram of leetin, and then you use the little pump that you have in front of you here. It's actually really easy to do. You just need to go out and get one. The foam that I'm adding on top will play with the rest of the ingredients the same way as the liquid.

This is to increase those beautiful aromatics and complexity. Now for taste experience, please note down. We're going to have flavor notes of pineapple, mango, orange. We're going to have an aftertaste highlighting that beautiful pineapple and orange. The foam on top is one tablespoon. Not too much, not too little. Please hold off on tasting until I call time. When we're tasting, we're going to pick up the cup. We're going to swirl four times and we're going to take two different sips.

I want us to remember that coffee flavors, just like you, are perfect just the way you are. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to innovate and improve, but we can't lose ourselves in the process. When you enjoy this final beverage, please take a few moments for yourself and really reflect what are the coffee flavors that you want to bring with you into the future because it matters. I want to thank you for my opportunity of sharing the flavors that I would like to bring with me on my journey towards reclaiming coffee flavors.

Now, please enjoy the beverage. >> [applause] >> Thank you very much. Time >> that was our ninth semi- finalist. Please give him a massive round of applause and we'll be back after this ad break for a short interview.