“Coming from WA, we saw The Golden Bean as an opportunity to meet all sorts of industry people from all over the country, have some fun and judge some awesomely roasted and brewed coffee. The event didn’t disappoint! 1300+ coffee’s entered and only a week to judge them all, lucky the crew at Cafe Culture are veterans at this event and have the beer on-hand to cleanse the palate, and help us get to sleep each night!
The category I was helping to judge, Espresso, had around 280 coffees entered. Kylie’s category, Milk Based, had around 330 coffees to be judged, a big week of palate development was had by both of us.
We arrived In Port Macquarie Tuesday evening after flying into Brisbane early morning, met a few people and had a few beers to wash away the days drive. The next few days were jam packed with industry seminars from Natvia, Brita Water, Coffee Roasters Australia, cafe trends in America, Cafe Culture and a well earned Beer Evaluation at the end of the first day by James Squires master brewer (nice touch Cafe Culture crew)…… In between the seminars was the all important coffee judging. Considering Australia is a world leader in specialty coffee we were literally judging some of the world’s best coffees, and some of the worst! Stone fruits, citrus fruits, berries, chocolate, cocoa, creamy, buttery, clean acidity were all very common and enjoyed characteristics that roasters Australia wide had managed to get from their coffee. And the bad characters? We won’t go there!
All the awards that were given were certainly deserved and we were very happy to receive one for Yahava as well, next year we will be back to claim a few more.”
Jade O’Shea
Yahava KoffeeWorks
