Champion's choice: Eline Ferket, Austrian Brewers Cup Champion 2024

Congratulations to Eline Ferket, who just won the Austrian Brewers Cup, hence qualifying for the 2025 World Brewers Cup. She used a blend of the three APAX LAB mineral concentrates to craft her winning water recipe.

How did you first hear about us and why did you decide to use APAX LAB to make your water for the competition?

I heard about APAX Lab for the first time at the beginning of this year before it was launched officially, I think through a friend who told me there’s this new cool brewing water mineral company in the works that I might be interested in for competition. I sent through a message to ask if I could get some minerals to play with, and the rest is history.

In what ways did the mineral concentrates help you win the competition?

The concentrates simplified the very complex topic that is water chemistry, and allowed me to create different profiles to test out on the coffee very easily. I educated myself on the basics, but from there on out the work is done for you.

Dialling in the water profile that works best for the competition coffee is one of my favourite parts of the whole process, it was crazy for me to see how you can keep everything the same in your recipe except for the water, and see the huge a difference that it makes in the coffee experience. Having the time to test different waters and being able to control this aspect of the dial in for competition is hugely helpful in maintaining consistency and understanding how your coffee behaves.

What is your favourite APAX LAB profile and why? 

It depends on the coffee for me! Every coffee behaves very differently, even from day to day, and I try to react to that and make changes in the profile that allow that coffee to reach its flavour potential.

What was your winning water recipe with APAX LAB? And what coffee did you use it with?

I used 1g of Tonik, 2g of Jamm and 2g of Lylac per liter of Zero water, and it was sitting at about 105 ppm.

I used it for Paul Doyle‘s lovely Carbonic Maceration Washed Geisha. The coffee naturally has a lot of sweetness, so I actually expected not to have to highlight this even more with the water profile, but the sweetness of the coffee really benefited from a lot of Jamm - it became super candy-like as it cooled down. I also decided that the florality of the Geisha could then be highlighted as well with a bit more Lylac, and I thought those two really complemented each other well for my brew.

Finally, what piece of advice would you give to someone who is just getting started with making their own water?

I would say to ask a lot of questions to people you know that are knowledgable about water chemistry, it does help to know a little about how all this stuff works,  so that you can problem solve on the days leading up to the competition in case some things go wrong (like your only Zero water filter giving up, for example).

And then of course to play around with different profiles on the same coffee and see the differences these make to get a feel for which flavours and textures you can highlight, tone down, smoothen out, and how.