2021: Tuomas Merikanto — The First-Timer Who Won Everything
He had never competed before the Finnish championship. Four months later, he was world champion. Tuomas Merikanto proved that the Aeropress Championship belongs to anyone who understands extraction.
2021: Tuomas Merikanto — The First-Timer Who Won Everything
“I had never competed in a coffee competition before the Finnish championship. I just really liked making Aeropress coffee.” — Tuomas Merikanto, 2021 World Aeropress Champion
The Champion
Tuomas Merikanto is Finnish. This matters, because Finland drinks more coffee per capita than any country on Earth — roughly twelve kilograms per person per year, or about four cups a day for every man, woman, and child. The Finns do not treat coffee as a lifestyle accessory. They treat it as a civil right.
Merikanto was not a professional barista. He was not a roaster. He was not a coffee influencer. He was a home brewer who liked his Aeropress enough to enter the Finnish national championship on what appears to have been a whim. He won it. Then he went to the world championship — his second competition ever — and won that too.
This is the Aeropress Championship’s defining myth: that anyone, anywhere, with a thirty-five-dollar plastic tube and an understanding of what good coffee tastes like, can become the best in the world. Tuomas Merikanto is the proof.
The Stage
The 2021 World Aeropress Championship was held in Melbourne, Australia — a city that takes its coffee as seriously as any on Earth, and more seriously than most. The competition had been delayed by the pandemic, and the energy in the room reflected it: relief, hunger, and the particular intensity of people who had been waiting two years to prove something.
The format was straightforward: three rounds, single elimination. Each competitor brewed one cup per round. Three judges tasted blind. The best cup advanced. Merikanto advanced three times.
The Coffee
Merikanto brewed a washed Ethiopian coffee — a choice that reflected confidence. Washed Ethiopians are bright, floral, and delicate. They reward precision and punish carelessness. A natural Ethiopian would have been safer: bigger fruit, more forgiving. Merikanto chose the harder path because the harder path, when executed correctly, produces a cleaner and more distinctive cup.
The coffee was roasted light to medium — what a Nordic roaster would call “just past first crack.” This roast level preserves the origin character at the expense of body. The Aeropress, with its paper filter and pressure-driven extraction, would supply the body the roast had left behind.
The Method
Merikanto’s recipe was deceptively simple:
- Dose: 18 grams
- Grind: Medium-fine — finer than drip, coarser than espresso
- Water: 92°C (198°F) — hot enough to extract efficiently, cool enough to avoid bitterness
- Position: Standard (not inverted)
- Water volume: 250 grams total, poured in stages
- Contact time: Approximately 2 minutes
He pre-wet the filter, added coffee, poured about 50 grams of water to bloom, waited thirty seconds, then added the remaining water in a slow, steady pour. At 1:45 he began pressing — gently, steadily, for about thirty seconds. The hiss at the end — the sound of air pushing through the spent puck — was his signal to stop.
What made his cup win was not the recipe itself, which any home brewer could follow. It was his understanding of extraction. He knew exactly how his grind size, water temperature, and contact time would interact with his specific coffee. He had brewed this coffee dozens of times before the championship. He knew what it would do before he poured the water.
What the Judges Tasted
The judges’ notes described a cup with “remarkable clarity,” “pronounced florals,” and “a sweetness that lingered long after the cup was empty.” The mouthfeel was described as “silky” — a word that appears repeatedly in Aeropress Championship judging notes, and which the Aeropress achieves more reliably than any other brewer at its price point.
Second place went to Maru Mallee of the Netherlands. Third to Brandon Smith of South Africa. But the story of 2021 was Merikanto: the home brewer from the country that drinks more coffee than anyone, who decided to compete for the first time and discovered he was the best in the world.
The Contour Pairing: Brazil Natural
Merikanto’s recipe — medium-fine grind, 92°C water, standard position, slow press — is an extraction framework that rewards coffees with body and sweetness. It tames brightness without eliminating it. It finds clarity in coffees that might otherwise present as heavy or one-dimensional.
Our Brazil Natural (Cerrado Mineiro, natural process, milk chocolate and hazelnut notes) is an ideal match. Brazilian naturals are famously forgiving — they taste like coffee is supposed to taste, only better. Merikanto’s method adds structure: the medium-fine grind and precise temperature pull out the nutty sweetness without over-extracting, while the paper filter and slow press give the heavy body a silky finish.
Brew It Yourself: The Merikanto Method with Brazil Natural
- Heat water to 92°C (198°F). If your kettle doesn’t have temperature control, bring to a boil and let it sit for 45 seconds.
- Place a paper filter in the cap and rinse with hot water. Discard the rinse water.
- Weigh 18 grams of Brazil Natural. Grind medium-fine — think table salt.
- Assemble the Aeropress in the standard position over your mug.
- Add the coffee. Pour 50 grams of water. Start a timer. Stir gently for 5 seconds.
- At 0:30, pour the remaining 200 grams of water in a slow, steady stream.
- At 1:45, insert the plunger and press gently. Aim for a 30-40 second press. Stop at the hiss.
- You should have approximately 230 grams of brewed coffee. Taste. If it’s too strong, bypass with 10-20 grams of hot water.
Next in the series: Jibbi Little, the Australian who won in 2022 with a recipe so bold they called her “The Thunder from Down Under.”