Boram Um: barista announces plans after winning title – 07/12/2023 – Café na Prensa

The best barista in the world doesn’t know what to do.

After years with a total focus on championships, Brazilian Boram Julio Um, 32, has reached the top of the world and, for the first time since 2019, he doesn’t have to get up every morning thinking about the incessant training routine.

In June of this year, Boram won the World Barista Championship, the most important competition in the area, a feat that Brazil had never achieved before – the tournament has existed since 2000.

Unlike sports competitions, once a barista wins the title of best in the world, he no longer competes.

The dispute involves exhausting training and a lot of insistence. There are baristas who compete for several years and give up without reaching the maximum title.

“So winning the world was, in a way, a huge relief. They were very intense routines. But I still don’t know what to do with my life today”, jokes Boram.

Before the title, life was all about training. He was enchanted by the world of disputes from the first steps in this universe.

Graduated in business at Boston University, Boram, a descendant of South Koreans, worked in the financial market until 2014, when he became “fed up”, in his words, and decided to help his father, who since 2009 had grown coffee in Minas Gerais.

He started working in quality control and then took on the mission of helping his father to export.

Then it started to travel the world at fairs and events in the sector. That was when he had his first shock: the specialty coffee industry viewed Brazilian beans with reservations.

“I used to say ‘we are producing high quality coffee in Brazil’ and 90% of the answers were along the lines of ‘Brazil doesn’t make specialty coffee, you make commercial coffee’. Many of the customers didn’t even want to taste our coffee”, he recalls. .

Therefore, the now champion says he wants to use the international prominence he is receiving to strengthen Brazil’s image as a producer of quality grains.

At one of the first coffee events, in 2015, Boram had his second shock, but this one was positive. It was when he attended the world barista championship in Seattle, USA. On the occasion, the Australian Sasa Sestic was crowned the best in the world.

That moment had a strong impact on Boram, then 24 years old and fresh out of the financial market for the coffee industry. He witnessed, there, what is considered the pinnacle of the barista profession.

But the Brazilian preferred to take it easy and plan well. Thus, he took his first steps in competitions in 2019, already with a very clear objective: to be the best in the world.

In the first dispute, Boram won the Brazilian championship – a requirement to represent the country in the world stage.

On the first try on the global stage, it didn’t work. It fell in the semifinals. In the following year, he once again won the national stage, but, again, the world stumbled in the semifinal.

In May of this year, I asked Boram if it would be different now.

He showed confidence and replied: “We believe that we are very close to a first Brazilian title in the world”. He was. About a month later, he lifted the trophy in Athens, where the World Barista Championship was held.

By coincidence, the announcement of the winners was made by the Brazilian Edgard Bressani, author of the book “Guia do Barista”, a pioneering work on the subject, and responsible for bringing barista championships to the country in the early 2000s.

Bressani, who served as the event’s master of ceremonies, said he had to contain his emotions when he received the final ranking. It was, in a way, the result of more than two decades of work on behalf of Brazilian baristas.

It was time for Brazil, says Bressani, noting that the country is the largest producer in the world and the second that consumes the most coffee.

For him, talent and preparation were fundamental in conquering Boram. People who follow the barista’s career often use terms like “dedicated” and “focused” to describe his trajectory.

To prepare for the contest, Boram surrounded himself with a team made up of people with a lot of experience in barista competitions. He trained 12 hours a day.

In those four years devoted to competitions, he says he had just one week off, to go to a friend’s wedding.

Now, freed from these training routines, I ask him if he’s finally taking a vacation. The barista laughs and says he hopes so. But this time, he doesn’t show much confidence in what he says.

Meanwhile, Boram’s attention turns to his family’s coffee shop, Um Coffee Co., in São Paulo, and promoting beans from Brazil. “The plan is to fulfill the objectives that we wanted: to raise and enhance the quality of Brazilian coffee”.

According to Bressani, the title in fact gives Boram great projection, who should take advantage of it to become an ambassador of coffees in Brazil.

In the world, competitors need to prepare three drinks: an espresso, one with milk and a drink. Boram espresso was a geisha coffee grown in Panama. But, for the drink with milk, he used a blend of Panamanian (70%) and Brazilian (30%) grains. And, in the drink, it was 100% coffee from Brazil.

As of August, he should embark on a series of international engagements. As a champion, he needs to attend several industry events.

Now, as he travels around the world as the best barista in the world, he hopes to receive different responses from those he heard in 2015 when he talked about Brazilian coffee.

At the end, he again states that he wants to see Brazil perceived by the world as a synonym for producing quality coffee.

And will advocate for it.

The best barista in the world seems to know exactly what to do.

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