5 things we've learned from training World Barista Champions 5 things we've learned from training World Barista Champions

5 things we've learned from training World Barista Champions

At Axil, we’ve had the rare opportunity of training not one, but two World Barista Champions over the past 4 years: Anthony Douglas in 2022 and Jack Simpson in 2025. Over years of working alongside the best baristas in the world, we’ve learned that the difference between a good cup of coffee and an exceptional one comes down to a few details most people overlook.

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Water matters more than most people think

Water makes up 90 to 99% of your coffee depending on how you brew it, so as you can imagine it is one of the most important parts of making coffee. While we're very lucky to have great water in Melbourne, water from different parts of Australia and the world can drastically impact the flavour of your coffee. Depending on the hardness of the water it can also impact the extraction of the cup. So essentially if there's more minerals in the water, the more extraction power the water has.
Using filtered water is a great place to start. It also helps protect your machine from scale build up.

Weigh Everything

Making coffee is like making a cake. You need to weigh all the variables to have a consistent product. If you change the amount of flour and eggs every time you make a cake, it would be wildly different. The same thing applies to coffee.
Measure all the variables, weight of the coffee grounds, the water used to extract the coffee and the time it takes to extract. This is what we focus on to produce a consistent coffee time and time again.
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Buy Fresh, Store Properly

Fresh is best. Here at Axil, we focus a lot on the age of the coffee. In stores, we typically age the coffee three to four weeks in order to get the best out of it. Through the roasting process, a lot of chemical changes happen within the bean. The beans begin to slowly release CO2 days after roasting. We allow the coffee to move through this process before using it. This produces a cleaner and more articulate cup of coffee. But if you wait too long (6 weeks and beyond) the coffee slowly becomes flat and less enjoyable.
So we recommend buying coffee fresh and using it within the first month for the best expression!

Grind Your Beans Right Before You Brew

Just as we recommend buying coffee fresh and using it relatively quickly, grinding plays a big part in accelerating the ageing process! Think about the surface area of a ground bean compared to a whole one. When grinding, it dramatically increases the surface area, and in turn, its contact with oxygen. While we understand it's not always practical to have a grinder at home (we're always happy to grind it for you in store!), freshly ground coffee will always taste best.
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Temperature is Everything

Depending on how you brew, the temperature of water will play a big part in how your coffee will taste. Going back to the cake analogy, the temperature of the oven could either burn or under cook your cake. And this is a similar case for coffee. Higher the temperature, higher the extraction power. So as a guideline for coffee, we recommend espresso to be extracted between 93-96 degrees, filtered to sit between 89 to 95 degrees and instant coffee at around 70 degrees! (Fun fact: as instant coffee is already extracted, it doesn't need a high water temperature, unless you prefer a hot cup!)

These tips aren’t secrets. They're the details that most people skip. At Axil, this obsession with getting the small things right is what drives everything we do, from the farms we work with to the baristas we develop. If you want to taste the result, you'll find us at the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show across four sites from March 25-29. Or at any of our Melbourne cafes all year round.! 

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