Golden Bean: Behind the Scenes at Our Favorite Coffee Competition.

In an earlier blog post we talked about the awards we have won and why we keep striving to be the best coffee roaster out there. You may have read that one and wondered what those competitions we attend are like. What do we do there besides win awards? Where are they? Who competes? Today, we’re going to to give you a behind the scenes look into our favorite competition: Golden Bean North America.

The Golden Bean coffee roasters competition has earned a special place in our hearts, and it’s not just because we’ve won several awards there. It’s a special coffee competition!

Golden Bean is an Australia-based competition for coffee roasters. These days it has a North American branch, and that’s the one we compete in. It also happens to be the world’s largest Coffee Roasting Competition. Every year, the event takes place in a different city.

Roasters can submit coffees into the five-day-long competition, but they also get to attend the whole event if they want. Each day there are coffee talks from leading industry experts, and each night there are social events. Roasters from all over get to meet one another, network, and talk shop.

But, most importantly, everyone gets to taste coffees!

There are three categories of judging at Golden Bean: milk, espresso, and filter. Everyone in attendance gets to take part in the judging. All the coffees are scored in a preliminary tasting which everyone gets to take part in. Then the high scorers move on to compete head to head. Those are judged by trusted tasters. The golden bean goes to the roaster that scores the highest across all three categories.

It is a huge event, and we get to be involved in other ways. There’s an engine room where all the espresso shots for the espresso category of judging are pulled. In the past, someone from BonLife has worked in this room, dialing in each espresso and pulling a crazy amount of shots in a short amount of time.

When it’s time to announce the winners of the competition, there is a themed awards night. You get to dress up, and it’s a big party. We’ve attended western, 80s, and Hawaiian themed awards nights. And, not to toot our own horn, but we won awards at each one!

At the end of the day, we have enjoyed every competition we’ve been a part of. But Golden Bean has won our hearts because of how chill and fun it is. We really enjoy the time spent talking with other roasters and coffee shop owners from all over North America. And of course we never get tired of tasting the best coffees around!