It was a great honour to witness the crowning of the first World Tea Brewers Cup Australian Champion, Ayden Graham – barista and tea specialist of the St. Ali Coffee family, during the recent Brita World Tea Brewers Cup (Brita WTBC) at FineFood Melbourne.
This amazing 20-year-old South Yarra man has been brewing drinks for about four years and will represent Australia at the World Tea Brewers Championship (WTBC) in China in May 2017, after winning the “best cup of tea” nationally.
2016 saw the first Brita WTBC competition held at Fine Food Australia at the Melbourne Convention Centre, commonly known as the largest food event in the Southern Hemisphere. The WTBC comprises two rounds of tea competition, over two full days of competition. The first day is a closed service of specialty tea, where the tea is unknown to each competitor. Competitors are provided the same tea to best brew and impress the judges. This is a fair way to allow each brewer to extract the best tea brew possible within just 10 minutes.
The top six finalists progress to the second and final round, an open service tea brewing, allowing competitors 15 minutes to create their own tea choice and a specialty beverage using tea to impress each judge.
Ayden impressed the judges with a musky, black tea from rural Chinese village Xi Gui in the Yunnan Province, valued at $1,700 a kilo.
He said, “… Usually I’m not a very competitive person, but I wanted to challenge myself to best brew tea.”
The winning signature brew involved infusing the water to make the tea, with lemon rind and grapes to elevate the flavours with acidity and sweetness, he says.
“I start each day with a good coffee, but then I generally switch to tea because you can drink a lot more of it without getting too spaced out,” said Ayden.
Ayden’s first WTBC win proves that tea brewing excellence can not only be found in the traditional tea houses and professional tea masters; it can now surprisingly be found amongst the café barista gene pool of specialty beverages. Ayden currently is working for St Ali in Melbourne, a successful café business that focuses on complete customer service and that also includes specialty tea service on the menu.
As a café owner, a good question to ask yourself is with more than 50% of all cafés now offering a basic loose leaf tea menu, how will your café business benefit from new and exciting specialty tea, tea fashioned drinks and other tea based beverage offerings in the future?
Congratulations Ayden, and all of us at AASTA – look forward to your Shanghai WTBC international competition success at the SIAL Trade Expo, held in early May 2017.
AASTA were proud to support the Brita WBTC and the many members who made up the esteemed judging panel. Thank you all for volunteering to make our event great – Head Judge, Nathan Wakeford WTC founding director AASTA; WTBC Judges Sara De Witt AASTA Marketing, Michael Kinahan, Tania Stacey, and Mark Thirlwall as event MC.
Story By David Parnham, AASTA
