Zest Coffee’s Simon Gautherin Wins the 2026 Australian Brewer’s Cup

The weekend of November 21–23 will go down as one of the more memorable ones in Zest’s story. ASCA Coffee hosted another outstanding Australian Brewer’s Cup Championship, bringing together competitors, judges, coaches, producers, and plenty of nerves — and somewhere in the middle of all that, our own Simon Gautherin put together the performance that finally brought the national title home.

For us, this wasn’t just another competition weekend. It felt like the continuation of something we’ve been building for a long time. Zest has always treated competition as a place to test ideas and see where our work really stands. Back in 2023, Simon finished fourth in Australia, a huge achievement at the time. The following year, Julijan placed third, and in 2025 he followed that with a fourth-place finish in one of the strongest fields we’ve seen. Alongside all of that, our team has found its way into almost every corner of the competition space: roasting competitors, sensory judges, head judges, support crews, runners, researchers, brewers, and overly caffeinated note-takers.

So walking into the ASCA stage this year carried a bit of shared history—not pressure, but a sense that we’ve been shaping something together. And this time, everything aligned.

Simon stepped onto the stage with the calmness he’s become known for and delivered a routine that carried years of work without feeling heavy. It was centred around the people and ideas that shaped his approach: four dreamers: Pocho Gallardo of Finca Nuguo, Jhoan Vergara of Penas Blancas, Carlos Escobar of Differente, and Gary Ong from Waved Tech. As he said in his routine, petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid— little by little, the bird makes its nest. And that line landed becauseit was true. Nothing about this win happened overnight.

The coffee Simon chose reflected that same sense of intention. He used two Geshas:

• 10g of an anaerobic natural Gesha from Pocho Gallardo at Finca Nuguo in Panama — floral, sweet, deeply layered.
• 4.5g of a washed Gesha from Jhoan Vergara at Penas Blancas, Colombia — clean, bright, tropical, and structured.

Together, they created a cup that showed tropical sweetness, delicate florals, stone fruit, and juicy berries all the way through. One of the standout qualities was how well the cup held from hot to cool, something that became key to the routine.

A large part of that came down to the water.

The Apax Lab mineral profile Simon used (a silica + magnesium composition) was waved for five hours using Waved Tech’s ultra-low-frequency electromagnetic vibrations. The science is complex, but the sensory outcome was very clear: sweeter cups, noticeably reduced bitterness, improved clarity, and incredibly stable as the coffee cooled. We spent weeks testing it, and the impact was consistent and compelling.

Here’s Simon’s open service recipe as used on stage:

Ratio: 14.5g coffee to 200g water
Brewer: Pulsar
Grind: coarse (approx. 1000 microns)
Filter: Perme paper, cut to shape
Water: Apax Lab custom mineral profile, waved 5 hours
Method:
0:00 – pour 100g with the Pulsar closed
1:00 – open Pulsar and pour another 100g
Yield: 155g (yield was the target, not brew time)

The Pulsar is such anunderrated brewer, it’s kind of like the Hario Switch but with zero bypass, and the added benefit of a fixed shower screen for more consistency

And, as anyone who has competed knows, there is no such thing as a solo Brewers Cup routine. Simon had a team behind him:

Carlos Escobar, Simon’s closest friend, flew from Colombia to help shape the recipe, the pacing, the workflow, and the overall direction. Being a two-time World Brewers Cup finalist, Carlos brought experience that tightened the routine in all the right places.

Nemo, Simon’s trusted sidekick spent the lead-up diving deep into the Waved Tech research, running tests, comparing water profiles, troubleshooting curveballs, and building the confidence behind the water strategy.

Aryan, our Head of Coffee at Zest, served as a head judge at the competition (not for Simon, for obvious reasons). However, his years of judging experience meant we had someone who knew exactly how things land with the panel — what matters, what doesn’t, and what makes a routine feel coherent from the judges’ side of the table. His insights helped shape many of the decisions in the final weeks.

All of this, the coffee, the water, the method, and the people came together on stage, and when ASCA announced the results, all that hard work finally paid off.

The national title marks a milestone for Simon and for our team at Zest, but it doesn’t close anything off. If anything, it sets the tone for what comes next. Brussels, end of June 2026 – the World Brewers Cup.

There’s a lot of work ahead, no doubt. More testing. More tasting. More of the small steps that slowly shape something bigger. But this is what we love. It’s what drives our sourcing, our roasting, our research, our conversations, our curiosity. And now we get to take all of that to the world stage.

Little by little, the nest keeps growing. And now we get to see where it leads.