Nas Jaafar
Nas Jaafar is a Malaysian coffee professional who won the 2026 World Brewers Cup in Brussels, beating a field of national champions to take Malaysia’s first world coffee championship title (World Coffee Championships — Brewers Cup winners, accessed 2026-07-23; Free Malaysia Today, accessed 2026-07-23).
The Brewers Cup is the world championship for filter coffee brewed by hand — a pour-over, not an espresso. Half of it is pure technique on beans everyone is handed; the other half is a coffee the competitor chooses and defends out loud to the judges for ten minutes. Nas won it on the second attempt at a world stage he had never reached before: 2026 was his first ever World Brewers Cup appearance, after four years of competing nationally (Free Malaysia Today, accessed 2026-07-23).
He was 38 at the time of the win, a father of two, and — in his own framing — someone who arrived with nothing on paper: “I started with nothing. I was a college dropout, so I only had SPM. But when I started making coffee, I felt this was where I could grow” (same source; SPM is Malaysia’s secondary-school leaving certificate).
Story
Getting into coffee
Friends pulled him towards the coffee industry around 2010. In 2014 he took a part-time café job while still holding a desk job, and worked his way through the trade as a barista, a quality controller, and a café owner before joining the green-coffee company he works for now. He was rejected twice by a major coffee franchise before finding a way in elsewhere (Free Malaysia Today, accessed 2026-07-23).
That path matters for what he does with the title. He now mentors younger baristas and says his aim is to build up Malaysia’s competitive coffee scene rather than only his own career (same source).
The road to Brussels
Entry to the Brewers Cup is bottom-up: win your national championship, and that title is your ticket. Nas won the Malaysia Brewers Cup in 2025, which qualified him to represent Malaysia at the world final the following June (Free Malaysia Today, accessed 2026-07-23; also reported by Malay Mail, cited in the research report). He competed under the banner of Malaysia’s national competition body.
The 2026 final was held in Brussels, Belgium, on 25–27 June 2026, alongside the World of Coffee trade show (Brewers Cup competition recap, accessed 2026-07-23; Free Malaysia Today, accessed 2026-07-23). Free Malaysia Today puts the size of the field at around 50 national champions.
The organisers’ own announcement gives the final six as:
| Place | Competitor | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nas Jaafar | Malaysia |
| 2 | Simon Gautherin | Australia |
| 3 | Bavis Kwong | Hong Kong SAR |
| 4 | Jackie Tran | Czech Republic |
| 5 | Ethan Junseong Park | South Korea |
| 6 | Angie Molina | France |
Source: World Coffee Championships, accessed 2026-07-23. Malay Mail independently lists the same five nationalities behind him — Australia, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, South Korea and France (via the research report). The organisers say only that after “three incredible days of competition, he maintained focus and precision to come out on top”; no scores are published on that page.
The coffee he won with
A Geisha from Panama, grown at Finca Nuguo at 1,700 metres above sea level, processed natural anaerobic (Brewers Cup competition recap, accessed 2026-07-23; the same farm, variety and altitude are stated by Nas himself in his Round One presentation, per the research report).
Two terms, unpacked:
- Geisha is the variety that made Panama famous — floral, tea-like, jasmine-and-bergamot, and the most expensive coffee in the world at auction ever since Hacienda La Esmeralda put it on the map at Best of Panama.
- Natural anaerobic stacks two processing choices. Natural means the cherry is dried whole with the fruit still on, pushing the cup towards ripe berry sweetness. Anaerobic means the cherries are sealed in a low-oxygen vessel to ferment, which lets the producer stretch and steer the fermentation instead of letting it run in open air.
The brew
The parameters, as recorded in the competition recap (note.com, accessed 2026-07-23):
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Coffee | 15 g |
| Water | 200 g at 92 °C |
| Water mineral content | 50 ppm, balanced magnesium and calcium |
| Brew ratio | 1:13 |
| Brewer | UFO V3 dripper on a Hario Switch base |
| Grinder | slow setting — roughly 580 rpm |
| Total brew time | 2 min 10 s |
The interesting choice is the Hario Switch base. A Switch is a dripper with a valve underneath: shut it and the coffee sits in the water like a tea (immersion); open it and the water drains through the bed (percolation). Nas used both in one brew — an initial 100 g pour draining through, then the valve closed for a second 100 g so the coffee steeps, then the valve opened again to drain the rest. Immersion builds body and sweetness; percolation builds clarity. Running them in sequence is a way of getting both out of a single 15-gram dose.
The water is worth a second look too: 50 ppm total dissolved solids is very soft water — almost nothing in it but the magnesium and calcium that help pull flavour compounds out of the grounds. That is a deliberate blank canvas, the same instinct behind the near-zero-mineral competition water Tetsu Kasuya used in 2016.
To verify
The roast, grind size and flavour notes. The research report behind this note reads further detail off his Round One video — coffee roasted three days before the routine on a hot-air roaster for 6 min 45 s, grind “size seven” at around 700 microns, and aroma notes of medium-intensity hibiscus and mandarin orange (2026 World Brewers Cup: Round One, cited in the research report, not independently fetched). None of these appear in the written recap. Treat them as unconfirmed until the video or an official transcript is checked.
To verify
His employer and job title. Free Malaysia Today says he works at “Falcon Coffees Asia”; a LinkedIn post from the company introduces him as being “from Falcon Coffees Malaysia” (cited in the research report, not fetched). The entity name therefore differs between the two sources, and no source consulted gives his job title — green buyer, trainer, quality control or otherwise. Falcon Coffees’ own website returned HTTP 401 to this machine on 2026-07-23, so nothing could be confirmed at source. See Falcon Coffees.
To verify
Where the Finca Nuguo lot came from, and what it cost. No source consulted gives a price, lot number, auction, or buyer for the coffee he brewed. There is no evidence tying it to Best of Panama or to any Cup of Excellence-style auction, and no producer or ownership record for Finca Nuguo appears in any source read here. Any price, score or auction link attached to this lot would be invented.
To verify
His competition scores, and the exact date of the final. The organisers publish rankings as year-by-year PDFs rather than a browsable table, and no score sheet for 2026 was located (World Coffee Championships — Past rankings, cited via World Brewers Cup). The date also disagrees across sources: the competition recap and Free Malaysia Today both give 25–27 June 2026, while the organisers’ announcement was read elsewhere on this wiki as crowning him on 28 June 2026 — see the same flag on World Brewers Cup.
To verify
The scope of the “first Malaysian” claim, and his full name. That he is Malaysia’s first World Brewers Cup champion is consistent with this wiki’s own champions table, which lists no earlier Malaysian winner. The wider claim reported in the press — first Malaysian to win any of the seven World Coffee Championships — was not checked against the official archives for the other six titles. No source consulted gives his legal full name, birth date or home town either.
Why it matters
Malaysia is not a name that comes up in specialty coffee competition. Where the country does appear in coffee history it is usually as a grower of Liberica — the bold, low-altitude third coffee species that survives mainly in Southeast Asia — not as a source of world champions. A world title from Kuala Lumpur rather than Tokyo, Melbourne or Zürich widens the map, which is the same thing Tetsu Kasuya’s 2016 win did for Asia generally and Emi Fukahori’s 2018 win did for Brazilian coffee.
The other half of the story is the coffee. A Brewers Cup open service is ten broadcast minutes of advertising for whatever the competitor brings, and the winner’s choice routinely becomes the year’s talking point. In 2026 that spotlight fell on Panamanian Geisha again — the premiumisation engine of specialty coffee, doing exactly what it has done since 2004.
Related
- World Brewers Cup — the championship he won in 2026
- Tetsu Kasuya — 2016 champion, the first Asian winner
- Emi Fukahori — 2018 champion, and the other well-documented Brewers Cup story here
- Matt Perger — 2012 champion
- Geisha — the variety in his winning cup
- Anaerobic fermentation · Natural process — the two processing choices behind that lot
- Falcon Coffees — the green-coffee company he works for
- Finca Nuguo — the Panamanian farm that grew his coffee
- Best of Panama — the auction that made Panamanian Geisha what it is (no documented link to this lot)
- Specialty Coffee Association · World Coffee Events — who runs the championships
- Coffee scoring · Cupping — how competition brews are judged
- Liberica — Malaysia’s usual place in the coffee story
- Premiumisation — the market shift his coffee choice rides
Official links
- (no official personal website found)
- Falcon Coffees — his employer’s site — returned HTTP 401 to this machine on 2026-07-23, so the homepage could not be confirmed
- Official — World Coffee Championships announcement of his win
Sources
- World Coffee Championships — Brewers Cup winners announcement (official) — accessed 2026-07-23
- World Coffee Championships — Past rankings (official) — accessed 2026-07-23 via World Brewers Cup
- Free Malaysia Today — Nas Jaafar, the Malaysian who brewed his way to a world title — accessed 2026-07-23
- note.com — Winner (1st Place) Nas Jaafar, Malaysia, 2026 World Brewers Cup (competition recap) — accessed 2026-07-23
- Malay Mail — Nas Jaafar is Malaysia’s first-ever World Brewers Cup champion — cited in the research report; returned HTTP 403 on access 2026-07-23
- 2026 World Brewers Cup: Round One — Nas Jaafar, Competition Body of Malaysia (video) — cited in the research report, not independently fetched
- Falcon Coffees — LinkedIn post introducing Nas Jaafar — cited in the research report, not independently fetched
- Falcon Coffees — company site — attempted 2026-07-23, returned HTTP 401