Morgan Eckroth of Keeper Coffee in Portland, Oregon is the 2022 United States Barista Champion! A seasoned competitor in their own right, Eckroth is better known outside of strictly specialty coffee circles as MorganDrinksCoffee, a content creator with channels on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. With a combined following of nearly 7 million people, Eckroth is the first already-famous person to win a major coffee competition, and their routine brought thousands of new watchers to this year’s US Barista Championship event.
And unless you are one of those 7 million who follow Eckroth, there’s a good chance you didn’t get to see their performance. 2022 marked the first year in I don’t know how long that the US Barista Championship was not livestreamed for those unable to attend the event in person. Luckily the new champion is “very online” and took it upon themself to record their winning routine, which she has since posted to YouTube.
Eckroth has posted all three performances from this weekend on their YouTube channel, with the Finals run-through already garnering over 60,000 views in less than a day’s times. There is much to unpack from Eckroth’s winning run as well as the US Coffee Championships as a whole, but here still in the afterglow of a thrilling victory, let’s all just take a moment and enjoy a wonderful routine from an individual injecting new life and interest into coffee competitions.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
Top image by Liz Chai for Sprudge
