Michael Harris Conlin
Michael Harris Conlin is a Filipino coffee entrepreneur and competition barista based in Metro Manila. He is the first person from the Philippines to reach the semi-finals of the World Barista Championship, and he runs a cluster of coffee businesses — roasting, importing, equipment, cafés and a farm-support foundation — that all point the same direction: getting Philippine-grown coffee taken seriously abroad.12
He describes himself in three words on his own site: “entrepreneur, champion barista, and advocate for sustainable coffee”.1
Competition record
In 2019 he won the Philippine national barista championship and went to the World Barista Championship, where he “became the first from the Philippines to reach the semi-finals and finish in the Top 15”.2 That is the headline fact about him, and it is the reason his name comes up outside the Philippines at all.
Two things about that result are worth spelling out for anyone new to the format. The World Barista Championship is an annual world final where each country sends the winner of its own national championship; a competitor serves espresso, milk drinks and a signature drink to judges inside fifteen minutes. Roughly fifty-odd nationals compete, and only the top fifteen advance to the semi-final round — so “semi-finalist” and “Top 15” are the same achievement stated twice, and for a country with no prior showing it was a first.
He returned to the world stage in Milan, Italy, competing again as the Philippine national champion, and used the appearance to unveil a piece of equipment he had designed (below).21 In the interview he says of that run: “we got the highest scoring espresso during the first round” — his own account, not a published score.2
To verify
His exact placements and scores, and the years of his national titles. No official ranking document or score sheet was located for either appearance. The championship organisers publish rankings as year-by-year PDFs rather than a browsable table, and the 2019 and 2025 files could not be reached from here.3 So “Top 15” is as precise as the evidence goes — a specific finishing position (13th, 15th, etc.) would be invented. The 2025 Philippine national title is stated by Barista Magazine and by his own Facebook profile line (”🇵🇭 2025 National Barista Champ | 2019 WBC Semi-Finalist”),24 but has not been checked against a Philippine national body’s own announcement.
To verify
Which year he competed in Milan. The research report behind this note read the Milan appearance as the 2021 championship held alongside HostMilano; the Barista Magazine interview, fetched directly, places it in 2025, and his own site refers to unveiling his innovation at the 2025 World Barista Championship.21 The 2025 reading is the better-sourced one and is what this note uses, but no official event listing was consulted to close it out.
The Better Vessel
Conlin and his team designed a device he calls The Better Vessel, intended “to improve espresso texture and flavour clarity by removing crema in an efficient way”.2
Crema is the tan foam that sits on top of a fresh espresso — carbon dioxide from the roast, trapped in a film of coffee oils and fine particles. It looks like quality and is often read as such, but it is also bitter and it muddies the taste of what is underneath. Skimming or otherwise removing it is a competition-barista trick for making a shot read cleaner and sweeter to judges. The Better Vessel is Conlin’s attempt to make that removal repeatable rather than fiddly. He says the idea came partly from an observation by his son Liam, and that he built the early prototypes himself using 3D design and 3D printing, a long-standing hobby.2
No patent number, launch date or adoption figures for the device appear in any source consulted.
Businesses
| Company | Role | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Conlins Coffee World Inc. | Founder | The original business — roasting and coffee retail in the Philippines56 |
| Henry & Sons Trading and Manufacturing Co. Inc. | President & CEO | A “360-degree coffee solutions company”: green-bean supply, roasting, equipment distribution, barista training, and an Institute for Coffee Excellence running certification courses78 |
| Manila Coffee Gear | President & CEO | Equipment company6 |
| The Giving Café | Founder | Café concept run as a social enterprise9 |
| Foundation for Sustainable Coffee Excellence | Founder | Farm-side and community work supporting Philippine growers91 |
Henry & Sons is the one with the largest public footprint — its own site calls it “one of the country’s biggest coffee and coffee equipment distributor”.7 The Philippine Daily Inquirer introduces him as “2019 Philippine national barista champion and CEO of coffee solutions company Henry & Sons”.8
Rappler’s 2014 profile fills in where he came from: he was president and CEO of Conlins at 34, and his family had been in the abaca export business (abaca is Manila hemp, a banana-family fibre crop and a classic Philippine export) before he moved into coffee. The article says he fell for coffee during family holidays in Canada.5
To verify
When Conlins was founded, and the corporate details generally. Rappler says Conlins was established in 2000, and his LinkedIn lists “Founder — Conlins Coffee World Inc. — January 2000–Present”; the Barista Magazine profile says 2001.562 One year apart, no registry record consulted. Similarly, Manila Coffee Gear, the Q Grader credential and the start dates for Henry & Sons all come from his LinkedIn profile alone,6 and the legal status and founding dates of The Giving Café and the Foundation for Sustainable Coffee Excellence rest on his own statements in a video profile.9 Treat all of these as self-reported.
Why Philippine coffee
The argument he makes publicly is a lopsided-numbers one. In the Inquirer he puts it like this: “We import close to 95 percent of all coffee that is consumed in the Philippines and we grow about five percent of what’s consumed — the hope is to change that.”8 That is his characterisation of the market in an interview, not an official statistic, and it should be read as expert commentary rather than a census figure.
The coffee he champions is also not the obvious one. Where most national champions arrive at a world final with washed Geisha or something like it, Conlin’s advocacy centres on Liberica — locally kapeng barako, the bold, low-altitude third coffee species that dominates Philippine planting and sits almost entirely outside the specialty grading system — and on Excelsa, its close relative.2 Liberica has no route into the big green-coffee competitions, which are built around Arabica, so the way it gets attention is exactly this: someone putting it on a championship stage and talking about it for fifteen minutes. He is quoted elsewhere on this wiki describing it as strikingly fruity, with jackfruit, ripe pineapple and rose — see the flag on Liberica.
To verify
Anything numeric about the coffees themselves. No cupping score, Q grade, altitude, variety detail, processing method, price per kilo, auction result or named buyer was found for any lot he has sourced, roasted or competed with. No Cup of Excellence-style competition or auction record connects to his name at all. Any such figure attached to him would be fabricated.
Related
- World Barista Championship — the championship he semi-finalled in
- Liberica — the species he champions, and where his flavour descriptions are recorded here
- Excelsa — the other Philippine oddity he points at
- Serkan Sağsöz — the other well-documented specialty advocate for Liberica
- Coffee Quality Institute — the body behind the Q Grader credential he lists
- Geisha — what most world-stage competitors bring instead
- Cupping · Coffee scoring — the grading systems Philippine Liberica falls outside of
- Specialty Coffee Association — co-organiser of the world championships
- Nas Jaafar — the Southeast Asian competition story at the other end of the map
- Coffee for Peace — the other internationally known Philippine coffee name, working the farm-and-community side in Mindanao