World Coffee in Good Spirits Third Place Van Lin x Femobook A68
Back on the World Stage After 18 Years
Van Lin, World Coffee in Good Spirits competitor
Van Lin is the founder of GABEE. in Taipei. He entered the coffee industry in 1997 and has spent nearly three decades in the field. He won Taiwan's very first Barista Championship, and in 2006 he published what he describes as the world's first book devoted to creative coffee, built on years of experimenting with everyday ingredients to expand what coffee could be.
In 2024, he returned to competition and won the Taiwan Coffee in Good Spirits Championship. In 2025, he represented Taiwan at the World Championship and finished third.
The Most Complex Coffee Competition in the World
Van Lin calls Coffee in Good Spirits the most complex coffee competition he has seen anywhere. The difficulty is not only technical. The format is designed to test a barista's all-around skills and ability to adapt under pressure.
The competition runs over three days, and each day follows a completely different format:
Day 1: Spirit Bar. The designated spirits and mandatory ingredients are drawn by lot just 30 minutes before going on stage. Competitors get 5 minutes to prepare and 6 minutes to present, designing their routine on the spot.
Day 2: Round 1. Competitors have 10 minutes to complete one cold coffee cocktail and one hot coffee cocktail, two servings of each, including the full presentation and service.
Day 3: Finals. Competitors must make a designated Irish Coffee featuring a designated whiskey, alongside a signature cocktail of their own creation.
What raises the stakes further is that the designated spirits and equipment are only announced about a month before the competition. That leaves an extremely short window to prepare for three entirely different formats, switching between them day after day.
Why the A68 Became His Competition Grinder
Femobook was announced as the official sponsored grinder of this year's World Championship. Van Lin says his first reaction to the news was delight.
He had been following the brand for some time and had read many reviews highlighting how user-friendly the grinder is and how easily it comes apart. When it was time to prepare for the competition, he bought an A68, and using it confirmed the qualities he cares about most.
Grind Consistency
For Van Lin, the first requirement of a competition grinder is stability. If the grounds come out inconsistent, or if retention runs high, dosing becomes unreliable and the intended flavor profile falls apart. The A68 satisfied him on both counts: the grind quality is stable, retention is exceptionally low, and nearly all of the ground coffee can be used.
He attributes this directly to the A68's low RPM design. A slower rotation produces a steadier flow of grounds, and the consistency of the result becomes much easier to control.
Stepped Grind Adjustment
The A68 uses a finely stepped adjustment system. Van Lin notes that this lets him dial in the exact setting he needs during competition, moving between espresso, pour-over, and immersion brewing quickly and without trial and error.
Effortless Disassembly and Cleaning
Cleaning is a practical benchmark Van Lin takes seriously. With many grinders, removing the burrs for a thorough clean is a difficult process. The A68 comes apart almost entirely, and every part is easy to clean. For anyone switching frequently between different beans and grind sizes, this matters in daily practice, not just on stage.
Universal Voltage and Portability
As a barista who travels worldwide for guest presentations, Van Lin points to voltage compatibility as a feature specific to his work. The A68 supports universal voltage, so he never has to think about converters when working abroad. The compact body makes it easy to carry, unlike the bulk of traditional commercial grinders.
Flavor Consistency
Ultimately, Van Lin measures a grinder by the stability of its flavor. He has observed that some grinders lose consistency the moment you change brewing equipment. In his experience with the A68 so far, the flavor holds steady across pour-over, espresso, and other brewing methods.
Three Brews, One Grinder
In the interview, Van Lin demonstrated the A68 across three different brewing methods, each with its own flavor logic and use case.
Espresso: The 20th Anniversary Signature Blend
For the espresso demonstration, Van Lin used the GABEE. 20th Anniversary Signature Blend. It combines a Costa Rica La Minita, the coffee he competed with at the 2007 World Championship, and a bean with a modern processing method. In his words, the blend brings traditional and modern flavors together.
He pulled the shot on a lever machine, using a technique he jokingly calls the "thick soy paste" espresso: a very long extraction that comes out almost as a slow drip, producing a highly concentrated, syrupy shot. This style is unusually demanding on a grinder's particle quality and consistency. Only a high-quality grinder makes it possible.
In the cup: the flavor opens up immediately, with distinct fruity notes and fermented tropical fruit character, high sweetness, a rich body, and a clean finish.
Irish Coffee: The Taiwan Championship Recipe
Van Lin then demonstrated the exact Irish Coffee recipe that won him the championship in Taiwan. Irish Coffee is also the designated drink in the World Championship finals.
The coffee is a Colombian Sidra, processed with a double fermentation: an aerobic phase followed by anaerobic fermentation, giving it a flavor profile of strawberry jam and dark cherry. For this drink he switched to a Switch dripper, an immersion-style extraction, and he points out that adapting only requires changing the grind setting on the A68, which takes moments.
The spirit is Kavalan Triple Sherry Cask, with a distinct sherry character, oaky notes, and berry tones. For sweetness he uses two sources: beet sugar, which helps the coffee's flavor come through cleanly and keeps it stable, and a distinctive Taiwanese honey called Sour Vine honey, which adds a red floral aroma.
The cream is an Irish heavy cream with a vanilla-like aroma, dry shaken until it resembles melted vanilla ice cream. He deliberately avoids a standard shaker here, using a different vessel instead, because the warmth of the hands during a dry shake can destabilize the temperature.
To finish, he passes a blowtorch over the surface of the cream to burn off air bubbles, so the line between the coffee and cream layers reads sharp and clean, a detail that carries real weight in competition.
In the cup: the first sip tastes like melted vanilla ice cream blending with strawberry jam and berry notes. As the ratio shifts on the second sip, it moves toward strawberry and cherry ice cream, with excellent overall balance. Traditional Irish Coffee leans nutty; Van Lin wanted a fruit-forward version that speaks the language of modern specialty coffee.
Pour-Over: Liquid Nitrogen Cryo-Grinding
For the pour-over, Van Lin chose a honey-processed Ethiopian from the Kokie washing station. Honey processing keeps the cleanliness of a washed coffee while carrying the fermented character of a natural, and he loves this coffee for its floral aromas and bright, fruit-forward notes.
Before grinding, he flash-froze the beans with liquid nitrogen, bringing them down to nearly minus 200 degrees Celsius. The purpose is to minimize the loss of aromatic compounds caused by frictional heat during grinding. After the treatment, the beans smell muted, a sign that the aromatics are locked inside the grounds, waiting to be released in extraction. Since this brew moves to pour-over, the A68 only needs a quick adjustment to reach the target grind size.
His brewing logic centers on what he calls the yield ratio, the ratio of coffee grounds to brewed liquid, rather than the conventional brew ratio of coffee to water. His reasoning: a brew ratio cannot tell you how much water is still extracting in the dripper versus how much has already drained into the server, which means you are shaping flavor in an uncertain state.
The pour itself runs in three stages:
First pour: a small, slow stream to draw out floral notes and crisp acidity.
Middle pour: a deliberate pause, slowing the flow further to pull out sweetness in the mid-section.
Final pour: a larger stream that passes through faster, easing back the intensity of the finish. Once the target flavor is reached, he pulls the dripper away entirely, cutting the extraction at exactly the right point for a cleaner cup.
In the cup: distinct fruity notes, a full and juicy sweetness, bright acidity, and high clarity.
He serves the coffee in two vessels. A tall, narrow glass concentrates the aroma and, because of its straight shape, emphasizes body on the palate. A flared ceramic cup, deliberately left unwarmed, absorbs heat quickly; as the temperature drops, the acidity and brightness come forward. Together they present the full range of the coffee's profile, and Van Lin credits the grinder's particle size distribution for elevating the pour-over's clarity and richness.
From Competition to the Everyday
At Femobook, we believe coffee should not stay on the competition stage as a technical display. It belongs in everyday life. That has always been our conviction: take what has been proven on the world stage, and bring it back into an ordinary cup.
This article is based on an interview with Van Lin.
