In the span of 15 minutes, a barista competing on the national title must serve an espresso, cappuccino, and a signature beverage to four sensory judges with two technical judges monitoring every movement. What happens when two of these former US barista champions combine forces? Meet Black & White Coffee Roasters. Since opening the first location in Wake Forest, 2016 champion Lem Butler and 2017 champion Kyle Ramage have grown the business into a bona fide star of the specialty coffee industry.

Roasting coffee in Seattle since 1995 as an independent and locally-owned company, Caffe Vita now operates 11 cafes throughout Seattle, Portland, and New York. With 2019 US Brewers Cup Champion and coffee educator Sam Spillman on staff at Caffe Vita, you know their coffee program is top notch. For this category of the competition, brewers compete in two rounds—The Compulsory and Open Service. The Compulsory is a blind tasting where the competitors all brew the same coffee on their chosen manual

2019 US Brewers Cup Champion Kaley Gann made her mark on the competition stage with a ceramic pour-over brewer she designed herself. Today, you can find her at Baltimore’s Ceremony Coffee Roasters. By sourcing green beans with loads of character and developing roast profiles to highlight the best of every coffee, Ceremony has made a mark on the East Coast coffee scene.

Hailing from Denver, Huckleberry Roasters is in constant pursuit of serving tasty coffee and making happy people. The “serving tasty coffee” part is not much of a challenge given they have US Roaster Champion Shelby Williamson on staff. Competitors in this category have to roast their coffee onsite for the judges. Shelby took home the title in 2019 and brings her roasting prowess to Huckleberry’s unique coffee selection.

Coffee In Good Spirits—or CIGS, for short—is a category in the US Coffee Championships that combines coffee and cocktails. Competitors must create both a cold coffee cocktail and a hot coffee cocktail in 10 minutes. Want a taste? We can get you *kind of* close. Head to The Annex outside of St. Louis. Here you will find the 2019 champion Matt Foster at the helm of their beverage program whipping up boozy drinks like the Carrot Cake Cocktail and Hard Hot Cocoa. Cheers!

The Arkansas-based Onyx Coffee Lab is a power player in the specialty coffee industry. From transparent pricing to a high end cocktail program, Onyx’s mantra “Never Settle For Good Enough” is apparent in everything they do. Yep, and you bet that includes competitors! Onyx has a whopping four champions among their ranks: 2020 US Barista Champion Andrea Allen, 2020 US Brewers Cup Champion Elika Liftee, 2017 US Brewers Cup Champion Dylan Siemens, and 2017 US Roasters Cup Champion Mark Michaelson.

This award-winning roaster in Ukiah, Calif. has a head roaster with a pretty big award of his own. Steve Cuevas is the 2017 US Cup Tasters Champion. This category challenges competitors to test their sensory skills by discerning taste differences in a triangulation. Competitors receive eight sets of three cups (or “triangles”) where two cups are identical and one is different. The competitor who identifies the odd cups out in the shortest amount of time wins.