The 2014 coffee judging season is half over representing the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show, Melbourne International Coffee Expo & the Royal Hobart Fine Food Show.
The Coffee Roaster wins Reserve Champion GOLD for espresso at the Royal Hobart Fine Food Show. Our total medal tally was 2 GOLD, one SILVER and 7 BRONZE medals for multiple classes in Hobart’s professionally judged show.
Check out our feine beans (chocolate coated Kenyan Peaberry coffee). They won BRONZE but we are confident you’ll think they deserve GOLD.
To kick off 2014 the Coffee Roaster won 2 SILVER and 7 BRONZE medals for multiple classes at the Royal Sydney Fine Food Show.
Just earlier this year were the professionally judged Australian International Coffee Awards (AICA) held in conjunction with the Melbourne International Coffee Expo (MICE) through which we added 3 SILVER and a BRONZE medal to our medal tally.
Later in the year features the Golden Bean competition on the Port Macquarie where all coffee lovers can join the professionals to cast their vote.
Before these shows, Coffee is roasted, blends tasted and decisions made. Finally, bags are prepared with entry labels provided by the competition organizers. The entries are transported by Express Post while fingers are crossed.
Many coffee companies continually refine and enhance their three or four main blends with the hope that the next show will validate their selection/blending/roasting prowess. In addition they might pick a single origin which is believed to command attention because of its taste profile or publicity about its lineage.
Coffee roasters and coffee suppliers enter these competitions for many reasons. Promotion, public exposure and bragging rights are high on the list. And The Coffee Roaster would be keen to embrace any benefits arising from such good fortune.
These competitions are professionally judged by industry professionals. Awards are predicated on each coffee achieving an objectively scored level. Hence, a GOLD is awarded if a coffee scores within the GOLD benchmark range.
However, there are other assets to be gained by The Coffee Roaster in these competitions. By way of explanation let me say that the coffee industry presents many changing targets.
Like the maturation of the wine custom, coffee tastes are constantly changing. For example, a flat white drinker becomes a long black drinker because they want to avoid the extra calories from milk and/or they are lured by the reputation of the extra tastes revealed by coffee in its natural form.
The extra tastes revealed in the latter frequently lead to exploring single origins or different blends. This has morphed into the emergence of an extra grinder, perhaps, at your favourite espresso bar allowing the Barista to evangelize the most recent coffee he or she is enamoured with.
Surfing this wave of Coffee Judge, Barista and customer preferences is a challenge we embrace. And the fertile ground of annual coffee judging competitions presents us with rich and informed environments for feedback.
Because of this, we rarely enter blends which were formulated some time ago. In many cases these blends have already won awards. So additional validation is not as important.
For us, the value lies in the experience we receive in relation to our new blends and recently discovered coffees from single origin. We are interested in new blends because most of our coffee is sold under someone else’s name & logo. Hence, we are constantly rising to the challenge of developing a blend for a new account.
This years RAS SILVER medal was awarded to our blend TCR43 for CLASS: 3B Cappuccino. This is a blend we developed in concert with the owners of Euston Cafe. Congratulations to Tim & Jenny Wang for assisting us in arriving at this award winning flavour destination.
Euston Café
Shop1 / 215 Euston road
Alexandria NSW 2015
If your coffee business is covered with signs, umbrellas and footpath barriers promoting your coffee supplier, perhaps its time you visited The Coffee Roaster in Sydney or Brisbane. Let us give you a tour of our roasting processes and begin the journey to your own (perhaps award winning) blend and build greater value of your business.
