Golden Bean experience
I recently had the opportunity to represent Boarding Pass Coffee at the largest coffee roasting competition in the world – The Golden Bean roasting competition held in Houston, Texas.
Last year was our first time submitting an entry, and we were awarded a Bronze medal in the Filter Coffee category for our Nosara roast, a medium-light from Costa Rica with fruity and floral notes. I was excited about the opportunity to attend the competition in person, and this would be the first time I participated in a competition as a judge alongside other veteran coffee roasters.
All in all, we tasted over 900 different coffees among 10 different categories ranging from Milk-based, Filter, and Super-Automatic.
It was an intense experience – three full days of tasting and rating hundreds of coffees and being able to exchange comments and thoughts with some many knowledgeable peers.
Most interesting for me was testing out my coffee tasting skills and comparing my observations with my peers. If you have been to one of our tastings you know that some people are naturally very adept at distinguishing tastes, and other (like me) have worked hard to train my palate.
Reassuringly for me – and I suppose all Boarding Pass Coffee drinkers – I tended to be more accurate than off.
And I am proud to announce that we brought back one more Bronze medal, this time in the Milk-based category with our Inua roast, a dark roast from Kenya. We launched Inua in June 2024 in collaboration Partners for Care, a local-based non-profit that helps people with mobility issues in Kenya. We donate a percentage of the sale of each bag of Inua beans to Partners for Care.
