Over the weekend of 22-23 February, Warsaw hosted the Polish Brewers Cup, the national qualifier for the World Brewers Cup, and it pulled in the best baristas in the country. The competition ran as part of the Warsaw Coffee Festival, and everyone brewed by hand: no pressure machines allowed.
What is the Brewers Cup?
The brief is simple to state and hard to do: brew the best, most repeatable coffee you can, three cups at once, on any device other than an espresso machine.
In the heats, competitors take on the Compulsory round, brewing a coffee supplied by the organisers that is the same for everyone. The final is the Open round, where they use their own specialty beans. The six who went through were the ones who convinced the judges on flavour, on getting all three cups to taste the same, and on the presentation itself.
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The 2025 Brewers Cup final
The title went to Michał Nowak, whose Geisha from the Colombian Andes won over the judges and the room. His technique was the story: carefully staged pours through a flat-bottomed ceramic dripper, which brought out everything the coffee had. Wojciech Filip and Piotr Skarżyński took the other two places on the podium.
This year’s championship showed once again how quickly the standard among Polish baristas is rising, and how much precision now decides who takes the national title.
Read next: Colbergcoffee at the Warsaw Coffee Festival: our report
