At the 2024 World Barista Championship in Busan, Mikael Jasin’s presentation broke fresh ground. He persuaded the judges to put down their pens and score pads and follow him, roaming from station to station, doing breathing exercises and meditating before taking a sip of his exceptional coffee. The concept of “mindfulness” is extracted from Jasin’s personal barista career and life at large. Being the champion in Indonesia and placing fourth in 2019 WBC in Boston and seventh in 2021 in Milan, Jasin decided to walk away from the competition. He expressed that the fervors which once fuelled him had begun to wane, setting the stage for his final presentation at this year’s championship. However, Jasin didn’t stop on his barista career path. He retired backstage and helped other Indonesian baristas to win championships. He started companies and cafes that served the people on the farm, in the industry, and in coffee shops, bringing Indonesian coffee to the world stage. He also practiced mindfulness, which helped him in his career and life. And eventually, the unique coffee-drinking journey filled with mindfulness crowned him this year’s champion. Now, being at the top of the world, Jasin is looking forward to amplifying his coffee philosophy further.
Finding Coffee
Mikael Jasin’s chance encounter with coffee was not romantic. After finishing his master’s degree in marketing in Australia, Jasin felt confused about his future career, just as most fresh graduates do. He first worked as a barista only to fulfill his daily needs in Melbourne. After exploring the Japanese philosophy of ikigai, which focuses on discovering life’s true purpose and joy, Jasin realized that coffee is not just a passion but also a talent of his. Moreover, coffee provides a sense of purpose for both him and others.
Melbourne is a great place for any beginner barista, as the city is immersed in rich coffee culture. Looking back, Jasin felt lucky that his coffee-making skills, from tamping and steaming to extraction, were very well trained in Melbourne, thanks to making hundreds of cups every day. He recalled: “It was like if you’re not quick and consistent enough, you’re going to die. Melbourne has strengthened my basic technical skills. It influenced the beginning part of my journey as a barista competitor.” Starting from washing cups in the back kitchen, Jasin eventually made it to head barista at Operator 25 and then Middletown Cafe. However, he didn’t feel fulfilled, thinking he could achieve more than serving coffee behind the bar.
An opportunity fell on his lap back home in 2017. He was invited to become the marketing and coffee quality control manager for the Common Grounds Coffee Roasters, a prestigious Indonesian specialty coffee brand. It was not an easy decision. The pay for baristas in Melbourne was tempting, but Jasin knew he could display more talents back home. He said: “I know in terms of money, it was going to be less, but in terms of further- ing my career, it would accelerate much faster. When I pictured where I would be in five years’ time, I knew I made the right decision moving back to Indonesia. It would take me a while, but I would get to where I need to be.”
Developing Coffee
It turned out Jasin made the right choice. When he first moved back to Indonesia in 2017, the coffee market in his homeland was just about to boom. Under the influence of Australia, the specialty coffee was served with avocado and salmon in brunches. Many people began to be aware of the quality of coffee. Nevertheless, since the specialty coffee was expensive, it was still an enjoyment for certain targeted audience groups. Then came the iced coffee trend in 2017. Local coffee brands such as Toko Kopi Tutu and Fore Coffee started this new coffee movement by serving Indonesia coffee specialties including signature iced latte with sugar. It is cheaper and easy to drink. Nowadays, local giant chains like Tomoro Coffee and Kopi Kenangan provide big volumes of simple yet delicious offerings available to everyone. On the other hand, smaller omakase-style cafes and slow bars began to appear after the pandemic as more people searched for a better coffee experience. Coffee enthusiasts also started to purchase beans and professional equipment to brew their coffee at home. According to the “Coffee market in
Indonesia’’ report by Statista, in 2022, cafes and bars in Indonesia generated a sales value of approximately 1.9 billion US dollars and will probably double by 2026. Increasingly exposed to international consumption trends, younger Indonesians embraced the new coffee culture.
Nevertheless, the market is full of potential not only because of the domestic consumers but also because the country itself also produces coffee. Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest coffee producer and exporter, ships coffee to the U.S., Italy, and Malaysia. However, robusta still makes up more than 70% of coffee grown today, which means coffee in Indonesia is struggling for good fame.
Jasin is among the first to bring Indonesian coffee to the world stage. During the years of competition, he and other Indonesian professionals and fellow competitors kept a constant search for high-quality local coffee. Jasin used coffee from North Sumatra for his signature drink and won himself the seventh place in the 2021 WBC in Milan. In that same period, Jasin realized that coffee could be “an agent of change,” helping the local coffee community and showcasing what Indonesian coffee could do to the world. He now runs two coffee companies and one coffee shop to support the growth of the local coffee industry. “It’s funny because now I have a few businesses, but it didn’t start that way. I started in the middle.” Jasin reckoned.
The first coffee company Jasin started was So So Good Coffee Company in 2020. The initial mission of the start-up was to help improve the Indonesian coffee industry through education. When the fourth coffee wave happened in Indonesia, So So Good Coffee Company began to focus more on working with more coffee brands, including coffee machines, syrup companies, milk labels, and more, to produce whatever they needed, from content generation to creative recipes. Then came the Catur Coffee Company in 2021. “I personally like to be on the coffee farms, so I decided to start a new chapter with a few of my business partners.” Jasin told me. The new coffee company is involved in post-harvest processing with a few coffee farming groups in Indonesia. They ferment how they want to, then sell the coffee to local business consumers. As the company grows more prominent, it aims to present local coffee globally. “We not only process our own coffee, but we also help other local farms to trade coffee beans to different places in the world.” Said Jasin.
Despite running two successful businesses, Jasin still wasn’t satisfied. Growing up as a down-to-earth barista, Jasin always looked for a connection with the actual customers. He said: “The insights that come from customers are important because, at the end of the day, they are the end user.” Last year, Omakafe opened to the public. Like its name, the coffee shop brings a whole new omakase coffee experience for the local customers. People will not be served a cup of latte or a flat white there. Instead, guests can order course sets just like in a fine dining restaurant and taste three or four special drinks of Indonesian coffee made in different creative ways to showcase their uniqueness.
From farming to barista consulting and creative coffee serving, Jasin tries to participate in every section of the local coffee chain. For him, all this work is not only about making ends meet but, more importantly, his businesses that spread across the industry also showcase who he is as one of the top influencers from the Indonesian coffee community. It confirmed the “ikigai” mind map he wrote down when he first stepped into the coffee field. He loves coffee. He can earn a living from it. Moreover, he can use coffee to make the world a better place. Coffee is his reason to live. “It is something that I didn’t realize straight away, but eventually, I found coffee to be very powerful in a way that it is an agent of change. It can change lives. It can be as simple as feeling energized for the day because of a cup of coffee, but it can also help many people get better livelihoods, especially the coffee farmers here.” Jasin told me in the interview.
Serving Coffee
While busy with his business and using Indonesian coffee as an agent of change for the local community, Jasin always remembered his passion as a barista and knew he would be one of the best in the world. In 2015 and 2016, he was the runner-up for the Australian Coffee in Good Spirits two years in a row. In 2018, he won second place in the Indonesia Barista Championship. He then moved on to the world-level competition with a triumphant return, placing fourth in 2019 in Boston and then seventh in 2021 in Milan. However, for Jasin, it is all bittersweet, as he was at every corner near the top, but he never reached it. Especially after the WBC in Milan, he confessed he felt burnt out and lost. In the interview, he said, “I really put everything in Milan-time, energy, money, and resources. I truly believe in the message I was representing. As a competitor, I was fulfilled because I knew I could be one of the best in the world, but the result meant I was not the best in the world. I wanted to achieve more, but I was just very tired.”
Jasin knew that he could not compete right away for another year. He had no idea what more he could do to bring him to the top, so he decided to step away for some time. “You don’t improve in just six months or in one year. It is a much longer process. So I have to really step away and sort of use it as an active recovery.” He said. However, taking time off didn’t mean total detachment. As the national champion for over two years, Jasin thought it was a good idea to step back and help others who dream of pursuing championships and let others speak out their coffee stories. In this way, he could still be involved in competitions, but he didn’t have to put all the energy into actually competing. In the next two years, he helped his wife win the national championship, as well as help the champion after her.“I also found that fulfilling. I stepped out so that I could see it from a different perspective. I can try to produce better coffee in a lot of different ways.” He said.
The experience of stepping away became the concept of Jasin’s presentation at the latest national championship, which helped him win the ticket to the WBC in Busan this year. Nevertheless, Jasin felt that the concept was still missing the last piece of the puzzle—a strong closing message. In a reflection he wrote after the WBC, he revealed that: “My goal this year was to win, and I needed something groundbreaking to achieve that.” It was throughout the training camp for the WBC that Jasin and his team realized that they could talk about mindfulness. During Jasin’s burnout period, he practiced a lot of mindfulness with his therapist, Shabnam Lee, including meditation and breathing. It helped him to get through the tough times, and indeed, it would help others. This is how the drinking protocol idea started to form.
Following this line of thought, the team came up with the idea of “walking around.” Jasin explained: “It is like sometimes when you’re overwhelmed, you probably want to take a walk and get some fresh air. We thought it would be cool if we could blend this into the presentation somehow.” Rambling from one table section to another is definitely one of the most unique experiences for the judges and for the audience as well at the WBC. A similar concept was applied by Jooyeon Jeon in 2019 but has never been used since then. It is a genius but challenging idea to be ideally implied, especially on a world stage competition with everyone watching. “I think for a lot of judges, it could be a very scary experience. As a judge on the field, they are instructed to do what they need to do. Therefore, we build it slowly, and they would be used to it by the end of it there.” Jasin said in the interview.
During the training process, Jasin and his team invited more than fifty people to experience, so they be- come confident about people’s feelings and reactions to getting their eyes closed and being taken around. They also introduced the concept of fine dining into the presentation, which might be more familiar to the judges, blending it with the mindfulness practice of mind, body, and soul. Jasin said: “Both the concept of fine dining and walking around are related, so I think it was just a very nice thing to combine. And it was great because it wasn’t just my idea, it was my team’s idea as well. To be able to execute it, it was a nice experience.”
Three sections, three courses, three progressive coffee experiences, Jasin led the judges into their “mindfulness” world step by step. In the first course section, he only asked the judges to close their eyes before drinking. The judges could still see the menu, writing down the notes. The comfortable experience the judges had at the first stop encouraged them to try more—closing their eyes, taking deep breaths, and feeling the cup’s texture before sipping the signature drink. Moreover, The cacao nibs from Indonesia balanced the sweetness from the coffee and gave the drink a more rich but harmonized flavor. It also echoes with the concept of body as he said in the presentation: the ingredients represented the earth he grew, wherever his mind went. Eventually, when the judges arrived at the final section, they gave up on taking notes and devoted themselves to the experience that Jasin was determined to bring them. After the meditation, The Gesha espresso from Finca Deborah provided the judges a clean and elegant flavor, almost like indicating a taste of the soul. In a later sharing by one of the judges, Junheng Chen, he stated that this was the first time a competitor could deliver the messages so well from the visual, smell, taste, sound, and touch through three different drinks.
The elegant floral fragment transitions to the coffee beans’ fruity and floral aroma at the beginning. The rough feeling when holding the warm coffee cup instantly transformed into the silky taste of a signature drink full of honeydew, watermelon, and sage the moment the judges took the sip. The prepared color-coded coasters and menu cards helped the judges forget about their mis- sions of note-taking for a few minutes. The music of Interstellar slowed the tempo. The judges closed their eyes, breathed deeply, and enjoyed an excellent cup of Panamanian Geisha. Everything was carefully and perfectly woven together in the show to give the judges as well as the audience a unique “mindfulness” coffee experience.
However, as Jasin pointed out in our interview, the concept of mindfulness in the presentation is not just about the big idea and the concretely built plan but every single thing in the show. “I couldn’t talk about all the details on stage, but everything was intentional.” Said Ja- sin. For example, Jasin avoided breathing between words when speaking into the microphone, a technique he learned from his daily physical exercises to make his de- livery smoother and calmer. He stirred the espresso for the judges to let the judges concentrate on the meditations. Moreover, even the spoons were specially chosen. The rubber materials made no sound when Jasin put the spoons down after stirring the drink.
“I think a lot of the time, especially in barista competitions, the innovation is directly related to the extraction process just before or just after. However, people might forget that when you actually drink it, you have to create an environment that allows you to enjoy that drink. So things like closing your eyes, taking a deep breath, or maybe having some sort of floral aroma or using a customized cup matter. These innovations are also great because they make the coffee taste better. Vice versa, once we have a better-tasting coffee, we need to take a moment to enjoy it.” Jasin reflected. Nowadays, coffee often functions as an efficient drink that people grab and go on their way to work. However, Jasin’s presentation at the WBC this year reminds people that good coffee deserves appreciation. And this could be a new wave for coffee. We will probably have more exciting coffee experiences in the future that not only focus on the taste itself but on all senses in coffee shops.
Spreading Change
Now that he is the world barista champion, Jasin is looking forward to delivering the message of mindfulness, the message of coffee being the agent of change, to a bigger audience group that he couldn’t reach before. He also wants to use the platform he has now to tell stories for people who don’t have that platform, such as the local coffee farmers in his homeland, Indonesia, and new rising local baristas.
Jasin encourages all the baristas who want to compete in the future or who want to make a big splash in the coffee field to dream big. And once they start the dream, they need to work for it. However, what matters most is always remembering why you have that dream so that you can stay disciplined and robust until you fulfill it. “For me, it is 10 years. For other people, it might be faster. If you remember why you have that dream, and be stubborn and keep going at it, it will happen. You cannot know when or how, but it will happen one day.” Said Jasin.
Jasin’s advice is probably also the reflection he has for himself after working in the coffee field for 10 years. Even though the quest to the top is filled with thorns, he never gave up. From the moment he stepped into the coffee field, he knew it would be his career. And he would be the best. For Jasin, coffee is more than just a drink. Beyond the taste, it is also more than the coffee experience he delivered at the competition. Coffee changed his life, and he used coffee to help change the lives of others.
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