Written by Frosini Vasiadi
Find more about Frosini's work here
Following up on the post about coffee competitions, here’s an interview with Carlos Escobar. A passionate, driven, and artistic competitor from Colombia whose story shows what these events are really about.
Carlos’ interview was on a late Friday night after a long day of teaching. I expected to do a short interview, file it, and go to bed. Instead, I met someone who made me stay up and read about water minerals at two in the morning. That’s Carlos Escobar: a bearded, energetic Colombian whose love for coffee comes through in every word, and before you know it, you’re just as hooked.
Carlos started competing in 2016 while living in Australia. He worked for a big roaster with access to some of the world’s best beans, but the company didn’t take part in competitions. Carlos did. He liked the stage, the pressure, the structure, and most of all, the chance to highlight producers, processes, and stories behind the cup. “I see competitions as a platform to bring impact or attention to things that maybe in other ways it would take way longer” he said. “It’s that stage, the platform to put a message in the heads or ears of people you couldn’t reach any other way.”
Over time, he developed his own style. Instead of only talking about technical points, he used presentations to send a clear message about origin and producers, and that made him different. People began to recognize a “Carlos Escobar” way of presenting: emotional, direct, and focused on the person behind the coffee. “At first I tried to fit in,” he said, “but then I realized I needed to sound like myself. A Colombian, a Latino. Once I did that, things started to make sense.”
At the World Brewers Cup this year, Carlos faced the high-pressure challenge of finding a coffee that could stand out on the global stage. Instead of following the crowd and choosing the well-known Gesha variety, he sought something different: a lesser-known Maracaturra from Finca Las Flores, a farm run by Jhoan Vergara. Carlos and Jhoan spent months collaborating, talking, experimenting, giving feedback, and refining every detail, until just two months before the event, they discovered a method that highlighted the coffee’s bright, clear notes. It was a bold choice, but their teamwork paid off. “I could use Colombian Gesha,” Carlos said, “but I wanted to show that other varieties can be just as beautiful when handled with care.” Their collaboration proved that careful attention, persistence, and curiosity can uncover exceptional coffees and create results that stand apart from the norm.
Carlos talks like an enthusiastic teacher when he explains how small changes affect taste, and two details he emphasized were water and waved technology. He compares minerals in water to salt in cooking. The right mineral mix doesn’t change the coffee itself, but it changes how we sense sweetness, acidity, and texture. Add the right amount and the coffee’s qualities become clearer. For competition-level cups, water can move a coffee from “good” to “outstanding.”
Waved technology, on the other hand, is a device that Carlos uses on the finished cup. It applies very low-frequency waves to the brewed coffee. The coffee itself remains the same, but the device helps group small bitter molecules together so they don’t hit the bitterness receptors on the tongue, resulting in less perceived bitterness and a fuller texture. Carlos uses a simple image: imagine a crowded dance floor that becomes orderly when the music changes. That’s what the wave does to the cup. It gets everything moving in step, pun intended. He’s careful to say these tools don’t replace good beans or careful roasting; they refine and clarify what is already there.
According to Carlos, high-level coffee competitions can be likened to Formula 1. The driver is the one we see, but behind every performance is a team that includes roasters, producers, technicians, strategists, and more. He says his main skill is building teams, and he’s not claiming to be a naturally gifted person — he calls himself the hardest worker — but he knows how to find people with talent, bring them together, and focus them on a shared goal. “To me, coffee competitions are a team game. No one gets there alone, no one wins alone” he said. That teamwork is how he and Jhoan got Finca Las Flores into the spotlight, and how his own roastery successes have spread influence throughout the market.
After several years competing, Carlos began coaching other baristas and competitors in Australia, Mexico, Honduras, and Europe. His approach is simple: help others find their own style rather than copy his. He enjoys guiding people to present what’s true to them, not a replica of him, because for Carlos, growth in the scene means spreading knowledge and giving others a chance to shine.
That same idea led him to create Differente, a roastery and coffee brand in Colombia. His goal was simple: to make top Colombian coffees available to Colombians themselves. In Australia, he had access to the best Colombian beans; back home, those same lots were already sold abroad, and Colombians rarely had the chance to taste them. “It didn’t make sense to me that the best Colombian coffees were easier to find in Australia than in Colombia,” Carlos said. “We deserve to taste what we produce.” Differente is small by design. Carlos wants it to remain a niche space for people who care about traceability and taste. Since Differente launched, other Colombian roasters have started offering higher-quality and more experimental coffees, a sign that change is happening in the local market.
Carlos explains that Colombian coffee culture is generous. People are used to being offered free coffee everywhere, at work, in homes, even in waiting rooms, and while that warmth is part of the country’s charm, it also created a problem: the idea that coffee should be cheap or even free. At the same time, commercial coffee in Colombia often includes low-grade beans and blends that wouldn’t pass export standards elsewhere. So when someone asks Colombians to pay much more for a top lot, it’s a hard sell. Differente asks for higher prices, but it also offers transparency and the chance for Colombians to try coffees that previously left the country only for export.
Carlos shared practical ideas for anyone who wants to make competition-level coffee: pick a coffee with potential, not just personal attachment. It’s common for competitors to choose beans for emotional reasons, but it’s better to look at a coffee’s raw attributes and ask what can be improved. Try different roast approaches. Don’t get stuck in one style. Light roast is not always best, and a carefully handled darker roast can be powerful. Test multiple roast profiles and compare. Treat water like an ingredient. Adjust mineral content to highlight the coffee’s best features. Water changes perception quickly and can be the fastest way to improve balance. And above all, focus on fixes, not rejection. If a cup has a flaw, think: can I fix this by adjusting dose, grind, roast, or water? Don’t immediately discard a coffee that shows promise.
When I asked who he would most like to brew coffee for, Carlos said that these days he prefers to brew for people who haven’t yet discovered specialty coffee. Converting someone into a real coffee fan is more fulfilling for him than impressing a celebrity. “When someone tries real coffee for the first time and says, ‘I didn’t know it could taste like this,’ that’s the best prize,” he said. He wants people to taste what great coffee can be and to change how they think about it.
Talking with Carlos felt less like an interview and more like a long, focused lesson on why attention and passion matter. He mixes technical detail with clear storytelling, so you come away with a better sense of why one farm or one process can make such a difference and why competition stages can be places to spotlight producers who otherwise go unnoticed.
If you care about coffee, whether you’re a roaster, barista, or curious drinker, Carlos’s approach is worth following: care about producers, test widely, use water and process intentionally, and build a team that helps the coffee tell its story. That’s how small farms and new varieties begin to get the attention they deserve.