Are Coffee Roasting Awards and Medals Really Important for Australian Coffee Brands?
The simple answer is no—coffee roasting medals and awards are not the most important factor when choosing the best coffee brands in Australia.
Unlike the wine industry, which has held competitive events for nearly 50 years, coffee roasting competitions in Australia have only evolved over the last 15 years.
However, while it may have started well after wine competitions, coffee roasting competitions truly peaked around the 2012-2017 period.
Over the last 5 or 6 years, there has been a significant decline in the interest of coffee brands in competing in roasting events.
These days, competitions barely raise an eyebrow. Nobody inside the industry cares who won, and there's a very good reason why the industry has turned its back on competitive events.
Bottom line is that there are many simple ways the coffee roasting competitions are manipulated by entrants substituting expensive and exotic coffees for their everyday offerings.
Unfortunately, this practice has been prevalent for a long time, and it's also virtually impossible to regulate, despite being easily detectable.
Like many other coffee brands, we also decided at the end of 2016 to discontinue our participation in commercial coffee competitions.
The organizers of these events prey on the insecurities of coffee brand owners by handing out an excessive number of medals to help "promote" the event.
One of the more popular and well-known coffee events even awards medals for submitting an entry, e.g., 400+ Bronze medals are offered in a single event. Seriously, that's a joke, winning a bronze medal for posting a pack of coffee to an event address and paying an entry fee.
Looking beyond the awards
We are proud to have received awards for our substantially engineered blends and our precisely roasted Single-Origin coffees. Those wins were achieved before the widespread "bait and switch" tactics, so often employed in events over the last five years.
We are also proud to be event champions - an honor bestowed on the "best" roaster.
We win awards with the same coffees we roast every day and ship fresh to customers across Australia from our Melbourne coffee roasting facility, ensuring consistent quality and freshness.
Our award-winning coffees are the real deal—freshly roasted, shipped Australia-wide, and available at competitive prices. Experience premium coffee direct from our Melbourne roastery to your door.