During his second-place World Brewers Cup routine, Zest Coffee Excellence Manager Simon Gautherin introduced his Clarity Pyramid: a way of understanding how green coffee, roasting, brewing and water progressively narrow an enormous field of possibilities into one intentional expression.

 

During my World Brewers Cup presentation, I used two versions of the same shape to explain how my thinking about brewing had changed.

The first was an inverted pyramid filled with equations.

At its narrowest point was green coffee. Above that came roasting, then brewing and finally water - each level growing wider and more technically complex.

That was how I used to think about coffee.

Start with one green coffee. Roast it, and suddenly there are many different directions you can take it: different profiles, development and expressions of the same raw material.

Then brew it and introduce even more variables: grinder, grind size, brewer, temperature, ratio, pouring structure, agitation and contact time.

Then you reach water, where the number of possible mineral compositions becomes almost endless.

In my head, every stage created more variables, more combinations and more possible outcomes.

Technically, that is still true.

But I no longer think it is a particularly useful way of approaching brewing.

So I turned the pyramid around.

My old model: complexity expands

My old mental model was essentially this:

Green coffee → roasting → brewing → water → more and more possibilities.

If you spend enough time in specialty coffee, it is easy to think this way. We constantly talk about variables.

Change this. Measure that. Try another temperature. Use a different grinder, pouring structure or water composition.

The deeper you go, the more you realise how many things you could change.

The equations on my first pyramid represented that complexity. The science is real. Every stage contains an enormous number of interactions, and water may be the most complicated of all.

But I eventually realised that when I actually make coffee, I am not trying to keep all those possibilities alive.

I am doing the opposite.

I am removing them.

Turning the pyramid around

The second model I presented was the Clarity Pyramid.

It contained the same four stages:

Green coffee. Roasting. Brewing. Water.

But this time, green coffee formed the broad base and the pyramid became narrower as it moved upwards.

At each level, some of the flavour possibilities disappeared.

This was a much more accurate representation of what I was trying to achieve.

The green coffee establishes the field of possibility. Its variety, origin, growing conditions and processing create the flavour potential available to us.

Roasting begins to unlock and shape that potential, emphasising some qualities while moving away from others.

Brewing narrows the expression again. It selects what I want to carry from the roasted coffee into the cup.

Water is the final and most precise refinement.

In my World Brewers Cup routine, I used water to bring greater focus to the citrus expression of the Gesha. By the time I reached that final stage, I was no longer choosing between every theoretically possible water composition. I was choosing the water that moved this particular coffee towards a clearly defined sensory result.

The narrowing sections of the pyramid did not mean that water or brewing were less important than green coffee.

They represented fewer remaining possibilities.

As you move upwards, the decisions become more specific.

Every decision closes doors

The moment you choose a coffee, you have already begun refining.

That coffee has a particular character, structure and potential. It cannot become absolutely anything—and that is what makes it interesting.

When you decide how to roast it, you close some doors and keep others open.

When you choose a brewing approach, you narrow the direction again.

When you design the water, you refine the final sensory outcome even further.

Every deliberate decision says:

I want more of this.

I want less of that.

I want the coffee to move in this direction rather than another.

Instead of seeing coffee as a system that becomes increasingly complex at every stage, I now see it as a process of progressive refinement.

The possibilities are enormous at the beginning.

Your job is to remove them, one decision at a time.

Complexity exists before the decision

This distinction became very important to me.

There might be 20 things you could change. That does not mean you should be thinking about all 20 every time you brew.

The real work is determining which of them are relevant.

Before you establish an intention, every variable can appear equally important. Once you know the direction you want to take a coffee, many decisions become easier—and many variables stop mattering altogether.

I am no longer asking:

“What are all the things I could change?”

I am asking:

“What needs to change to move this coffee closer to what I want?”

That is a very different way of approaching brewing.

For me, it creates far more clarity.

Water becomes a refinement tool

Water can easily make coffee feel overwhelmingly complicated.

There is an almost endless number of water compositions you could create. If you begin by asking, “What water should I use?”, the question can become abstract very quickly.

I prefer to begin with the coffee.

What am I tasting?

What do I want to highlight?

What feels out of balance?

What kind of acidity, texture, clarity or flavour expression am I looking for?

Once those questions have been answered, the number of genuinely useful water options becomes much smaller.

Water stops being another universe of possibilities and becomes a tool for refinement.

The same is true of brewing.

And roasting.

The goal is not to use every variable available to you. The goal is to recognise which variables matter for the direction you have chosen.

The science remains complex

The Clarity Pyramid does not suggest that the chemistry has disappeared.

The equations still exist. The variables still interact. Understanding them still matters.

The difference is that they now have a purpose.

Technical knowledge is most useful when it helps you make a deliberate sensory decision. Complexity without direction creates more options. Complexity guided by intention helps you remove them.

That was the shift in my thinking.

I did not need fewer possibilities because I understood less.

I could remove possibilities because I understood more clearly what I wanted.

Simplicity is the result of the work

There is sometimes a tendency in specialty coffee to associate sophistication with complexity.

More variables. More technical language. More unusual techniques.

Increasingly, I find myself trying to do the opposite.

I want to remove things.

Remove unnecessary variables.

Remove decisions that do not have a clear purpose.

Remove anything from a recipe that is not contributing to the cup.

The final result might look simple. But simplicity does not mean there was no complexity involved.

Usually, it means the complexity has already been resolved.

That is how I think about brewing now.

You begin with an enormous field of possibility.

Then green coffee, roasting, brewing and water progressively narrow the system.

Decision by decision, you close doors—until the coffee has nowhere left to go except in the direction you intended.