Every Friday, Perfect Daily Grind rounds up the top coffee industry news from the previous week.  Here are this week’s stories – the word of the week is championships. Mon, 6 May Indonesia’s Mikael Jasin wins 2024 World Barista Championship. This year’s competition was held at the first-ever World of Coffee Asia trade show in Busan, South Korea. Mikael Jasin placed first, using both an Ethiopian landrace variety from Colombia and a Panamanian Gesha, with a focus on mindfulness throughout his routine. Australia’s Jack Simpson placed second and Japan’s Takayuki Ishitani came third. Ot ..read more

From 12 to 14 May 2024, this year’s Melbourne International Coffee Expo will return to the Australian coastal city globally renowned for its thriving specialty coffee culture. The expo brings together some of the leading innovators in the Australian and international coffee markets. Last year’s edition attracted more than 11,000 visitors from around the world – making it one of the biggest and most important events in the industry.  Read on to find out what’s happening at MICE2024, including competitions, awards, exhibitors, and more. Check out the PDG Events Calendar here. Competitions ..read more

Coffee professionals and enthusiasts are always keen to find new ways to experience flavour and aroma. And there are seemingly endless ways to experiment – ranging from trying different processing methods to even changing the drinking vessel itself. One of the most interesting – yet not widely practised – ways to manipulate how we taste coffee is aeration. Commonly used in the wine industry, aeration accelerates the oxidation process, which can dramatically change flavours and aromas. So as the wine industry continues to influence specialty coffee, will we see more high-end coffee shops start ..read more

The cold coffee boom is still in progress. As more and more roasters find new ways to enter this market – especially the ready-to-drink segment – innovation becomes an increasingly important factor. In turn, the quality of cold coffee products only keeps growing. Cold brew has been at the forefront of the cold coffee movement for some time now. As a staple on café menus, cold brew has helped to push the boundaries of what is possible with cold coffee. Compared to other brewing methods, however, many believe that there are inherent limitations with cold brew, especially in terms of expressing a ..read more

Experimental processing methods have changed the trajectory of specialty coffee forever. It’s not uncommon to see “anaerobic fermentation” or “carbonic maceration” printed on packaging in high-end coffee shops, with a small but growing number of consumers interested in trying these coffees. So with these advanced processing techniques becoming more popular, flavour notes have started to become more and more unconventional. And perhaps most notable is the amount of “funky” tasting notes that coffee professionals and enthusiasts now refer to – think wine-like, fermented, “fruit bomb”, or even ve ..read more

Every Friday, Perfect Daily Grind rounds up the top coffee industry news from the previous week.  Here are this week’s stories – the word of the week is events. Mon, 29 Apr Ryan Willbur and Laila Ghambari acquire Portland’s Guilder & Junior’s Roasted Coffee. The husband-and-wife duo both have extensive experience in specialty coffee – including stints at La Marzocco and Stumptown. Junior’s Roasted Coffee was founded by Mike and Caryn Nelson in Tallahassee, Florida in 2017, and later moved to Portland to merge with Guilder. Coffee industry mourns passing of Juan Valdez icon Car ..read more

On 17 & 18 October, Producer & Roaster Forum will host the inaugural PRF: Farm Summit in Santander, Colombia. The event will take place entirely on a coffee farm, unlike previous PRF events. In response to industry demand and feedback from previous attendees, this event will focus on regenerative agriculture and organic farming practices. Across the coffee industry, producers are under more pressure than ever to try new models in order to survive and thrive. To succeed, however, these practices must be holistic – rather than solely prioritising paying higher prices for coffee. Regenera ..read more

There are a certain number of variables you need to tweak and control if you want to extract great espresso – think dose, grind size, brew temperature, and yield, to name a few. Although these factors all play a key role in pulling an excellent shot, there is one vital aspect that is often overlooked: how clean your espresso machine and grinder are. Without using well maintained and clean equipment, it’s near to impossible to prepare delicious espresso with delicate and complex flavour profiles. For coffee shops, this means developing rigorous daily and weekly cleaning schedules, as well using ..read more

Every Friday, Perfect Daily Grind rounds up the top coffee industry news from the previous week.  Here are this week’s stories – the word of the week is launch. Mon, 22 Apr The Barista League to return Berlin for the first time since 2019. The event will return to the German capital on 1 June Berlin, with teams of two competing in a fast-paced, multidisciplinary barista competition at Jules Biergarten & Café on Luckenwalder Straße. Nespresso announces Philipp Navratil as Global CEO amid Nestlé leadership reshuffle. Navratil previously served as head of Nestlé’s Coffee Strategi ..read more

If you ask industry professionals and enthusiasts where coffee originates from, you could receive a variety of responses. While many people point to Ethiopia and Uganda as the “birthplace” of arabica and robusta, respectively, others believe that Yemen, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or South Sudan are where coffee has its genetic roots. According to a study recently published in Nature Genetics, researchers at the University of Buffalo in New York have traced arabica’s origins back to Ethiopia – further supporting claims that the East African country was the first in the world to ..read more