Golden Bean Australasia 2024 Wrap-Up

What a great week it was in Melbourne celebrating the best roasters in Australasia with the Golden Bean Competition and Awards.

 

This year we tried a different approach and split the judging between two venues. St David Dairy and La Marzocco. A big Thank You goes to these two businesses for allowing us the use of their spaces. We hope we did not upset their workflow too much, but instead hopefully we highlighted these amazing businesses to some new people through our Golden Bean network.

 

This year we had 800 entries from all over Australasia, with 100 judges attending the competition and conference. We not only got to taste the world’s best coffees, but we networked with leaders in the supply chain by way of industry talks and presentations.

 

This year we are proud to announce White Horse Coffee as the overall winner. The team from White Horse have been competing for over five years and finally achieved the big prize through their dedication toward this competition and by submitting some incredible coffees. One of the team has won a trip to Guatemala to compete in the World Series, next February.

 

The Large Franchise winner was six-time champion Aldi Coffee roasted by Nomad Coffee/Black Bag Coffee in Melbourne. Black Bag/Nomad Coffee Group also received the Hall of Fame 2024 award for their dedication to their place in large scale coffee roasting in Australasia.

 

The Small Franchise winner this year was Espresso Club Australia. Sam Shih has been growing with Golden Bean and has worked hard to achieve this award. It was a proud moment to see Sam accept this award and tell his story of endurance, striving to be the best.

 

This year we saw many new flavour profiles delivered from over 300 coffee roasters. The Head Judges Raihaan Esat and Ben Gleeson had a challenging job of leading the category judges and table judges on this tasting adventure. We saw lots of co-fermentation coffees in the Filter Category, with definite high scoring towards tasting profiles of melon, peach and strawberry. Washed coffees also made a solid impact on judges this year, especially in Espresso and Milk blends. It was nice to see the same trends were on point in The Americas competition. The Gold Medal winners in Australasia and The Americas used beans from the same farm in Colombia (Yellow Rooster).

 

Category judges Steve McGuiness, Jono Goldthorpe, Head Judge Raihaan Esat, & Ben Gleeson pictured

A big Thank You goes out to the hundreds of people who make Golden Bean an important industry event - Sponsors, Judges, Runners, Venue Owners and the Team at Café Culture.

 

I can’t wait to see who wins the World Series next February in Antigua Guatemala.