Coffee Conversations: Morgan Eckroth on Judging Coffee Competitions

I find coffee competitions fascinating, probably because the idea of competing in one is so completely alien to me. It’s like giving a presentation mixed with a job interview mixed with a performance review all rolled into one, sometimes on camera—I’m not sure I can think of something I would be less suited to.

I have written about competitions before, specifically the cost associated with taking part (which can be astronomical). But I’m also interested in the mechanics, and when I saw that Morgan Eckroth was taking time off from competing to judge competitions, I thought this might be an opportunity to learn more about how it all works.

Eckroth has a lot of experience with coffee competitions. As well as winning the 2022 United States Barista Championship, Eckroth came second in the World Barista Championship that year and finished as runner-up at both the 2023 and 2024 U.S Barista Championships.

This is in addition to being a YouTube and TikTok star, with 1.4 million and 6.6 million followers on those platforms respectively (plus over a million on Instagram). Eckroth merged these two worlds in 2022, posting a series of videos in the lead-up to the competitions talking about their preparation as well as live-streaming their routine on YouTube and following up with a Q&A video detailing their experience. They also write a very good newsletter, which I recommend subscribing to.

This year, Eckroth decided to take a break from competing, but instead of actually taking a break they decided to pick up a clipboard and start judging instead. I spoke to Eckroth about the move, what judging entails, and how others can take part.