The Secret Behind America’s Best Cup of Coffee

iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Top baristas across the country competed this past weekend in the U.S. Coffee Championships for the title of America’s best.

Competitors had 15 minutes to prepare an espresso, cappuccino and signature beverage while judges studied technique and tasted the results.

Coming out on top was Charles Babinski, 29, co-owner of Go Get Em Tiger and G&B coffee shops in Los Angeles.

His secret to winning? It’s all about the beans.

“The biggest thing is to buy good coffee. In order to upgrade your coffee at home, find someone nearby who does something great and who you can connect to and get your beans from them,” Babinski told ABC News. “If you want to make a great cappuccino, then you’ve got to have great espresso.”

Babinski sourced the espresso he used in the competition from both Honduras and Ethiopia. The Honduras beans then went into his signature beverage.

“One thing about the signature beverage is the main flavor has to be coffee and the ancillary flavors have to support that, so the drinks are always interesting, but rarely are they necessarily indulgent,” he said. “When you’re doing these competitions, you’re representing a certain espresso and saying, ‘This coffee is special because of these characteristics,’ and you get scored on how you connect those characteristics to other flavors [in the drink].”

To represent the flavors in that coffee, Babinski incorporated pine tree honey from the farmer’s market, juniper and reduced-down grapefruit juice. He then mixed those ingredients in a blender with the espresso to aerate the drink and give it a layer of foam.

“I took a few qualities behind how the coffee was grown and processed and the flavors that resulted from it and tried to capture the spirit of those qualities in different flavors, so it was a little more conceptual,” Babinski explained. “It was a little looser than saying, ‘I taste raspberry so I’m going to add raspberry.’ It was saying, ‘This coffee has vibrancy and clarity, which stems from this part of the processing, and I’m representing that with grapefruit because grapefruit has these qualities, too.’”

The win this year was a big achievement for Babinski, who placed second the last three years, and whose coffee shop partner, Kyle Glanville, won in 2008. Babinski will now represent the U.S. in the world championship in Seattle in April.

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