Stepping into the Origami Cup, Tita Aey was right at home. Tita Aey began tinkering with pour-overs at home during the pandemic—”a pandemic brewer,” she calls herself. She took on homebrewing through a friend, fascinated by the entire process of experimenting, calibrating, and iterating.
“There's so much that goes into it. You invest a lot in it and you start experimenting, and then you see the results,” said Tita Aey.
She’s grown a following in the coffee community for her funny skits and memes, with a natural knack for relatable content. You can also catch her in pretty much any event surrounding coffee, whether it’s a pop-up, bar takeover, or championship.
The Origami dripper was a mainstay in her brewing setup, and with years of use and the hundreds of cups of coffee she’s made with it, she knows the dripper like the back of her hand. So when she heard that the Origami Cup Championship was coming to the Philippines for the first time, Tita Aey was certain that she wanted to participate. Not only that—she wanted to win it. “It was the first competition that I really wanted to win,” she said, having participated in two AeroPress championships in the past.
A week before the event, Tita Aey received beans from the organizers and began to perfect her brewing recipe. She was immediately met with a few roadblocks and a lot of frustration over the next few days. First of all, the practice beans were washed coffee, something she was not used to drinking. It took a lot of researching, testing different methods, and tweaking her recipe until she was satisfied with the results.
“Nobody really knows what the judges are looking for,” Tita Aey noted when she was coming up with her brewing recipe. “I really have to give credit to the sensory classes I took at the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), which gave me a baseline on what a balanced coffee tastes like. I typically love coffee that is on the sweeter side, but in my mind I’m always trying to be aware that it needs to be balanced.”
The week rolls by and it’s the day of the competition: September 28 at the Fifth on 5th in Bonifacio Global City. Out of the 54 participants, Tita Aey spotted a few friends, some mentors and people she’s admired in the coffee community. Despite being wracked with nerves, Tita Aey was ready with a brewing recipe that she was comfortable with—that was made for her. Round after round, the number of participants trickled down to three, with Tita Aey seemingly breezing through. And with her wonderfully simple brewing recipe, she won the title of the first-ever Origami Cup Champion.
“The recipe is the winner,” explained Tita Aey. As someone who doesn’t get too technical with her pour-over, she intended to draft a brewing recipe that was easy to recreate. She even encourages people to modify the recipe to their taste: “If you follow it too much, at the end of the day it won’t taste good if it’s not to your liking.”
Even with her years of experience with the Origami dripper, there was still a handful of knowledge that she was able to take home from the competition, like being more aware of a kettle’s water flow and how it affects the outcome of the coffee.
Tita Aey says that she has no intentions of joining another Origami Cup, if ever the possibility comes again. She’s happy to call it a day with it being her first and last win. But who knows? We might see her next time on the other side of the panel as one of the judges.
