The Golden Bean competition was held in Brisbane this year. It is the largest coffee competition in Australia and sees roasters, green bean brokers and other coffee industry types get together for four days of coffee tasting.
The process
Each entry is submitted to the competition in a plain bag. The coffee is then prepared to a set recipe. For example in the milk based section a 20 gram coffee dose was used to yield 40 grams of coffee to produce two shots. This is then mixed with 80 grams of milk. Similar to a piccolo.
The coffee is then tasted blind by two judges. We receive the coffee and a score sheet with the number of the entered coffee on it.
A score is given out of ten based on sweetness, flavours, aftertaste and balance.
If the two judges scores vary a lot, or are particularly high or low then the category judge is called over to taste and ratify the scores. The category judge also conducts random samples to check the judges calibrations.
What are the categories?
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Espresso
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Milk Based
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Filter
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Decaf
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Alternative milk
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Elite
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Espresso Chain store
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Milk-Based Chain store
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Super Automatic
We entered coffee in the espresso, milk-based, and filter category.
What's it like?
We all would have judged around 30 coffees every day. Some are amazing, some are not, all of them get put through the same analysis. You do get pretty wired by the middle of the day even though you try to sip and spit as much as you can.
I drank a lot of water, had apple and bread to help clear my palate, but by the end of the day I felt wide awake and tired at the same time!
Who else is judging?
There are roasters from all over the country. Some from larger roasters, some from small ones. There are also a lot of green bean traders. These guys bring in coffee from all over the world and buy millions of dollars worth of coffee based on their own taste buds.
All of the judges are interesting to taste with. While the language to describe coffee is mostly standardised it is useful to hear other peoples descriptors and what they pick up on when it comes to flavours and roast styles.
By the end of the week I was craving a beer or two and the awards night is a great chance to have a few beers with new friends and talk coffee just a bit more!
