The Great Roasters’ Charity Ball

The best coffee roasters come together to fight for the champion title using their skills in our Barth ball roaster, a rare piece of vintage equipment originally built in the 1930s and now living in our roastery.

This event will be a fun and relaxed, gathering the local coffee scene for a good cause: all the coffee roasted for this contest will be sold to the public, donating 100% of the sales to bushfire relief organisations.

Celebrating the ‘Ball’

A couple of years ago, we purchased an original Barth ball roaster recovered by master Brian Hoejmark in Germany. It is a unique machine that employs a different style of roasting different from the typical drum roasters most of us use every day. It is truly something special, a bit of an arthouse thing for us coffee geeks.

We’ve always wanted to celebrate and share this gift, letting our coffee roasting friends play with it and, why not, party in our warehouse space.

After our Christmas break and after the disruption of the massive fire, we thought the moment is now. This party is the perfect excuse to get everyone together and be a chance to fundraise for good.

Save the date

The party will take place in our Pro Shop and Roastery space in St Peters, on Saturday the 8th of February.

Starting at 2 pm, it will run for about one and a half hours and then we’ll continue the party at the local brewery Willie the Boatman, just behind the block.

A party for our community

We welcome everyone who loves to have a good time and wants to connect with this awesome community of industry people, coffee lover or just neighbours and friends.

It is a chance to celebrate the power of coffee to bring communities together.

The roasting competition

There will be a total of 12 roasters competing for the first spot. We have invited 10 of the best local specialty coffee roasters and reserved two open spots as wild cards (already filled).

The roasters will be given a time slot to roast two batches of coffee, using their intuition and experience, in the weekend before the event (1st and 2nd of February). If you are interested to see the Barth ball at work, please come in! We’ll announce the times of roasting here and on IG beforehand.

Caravela and Condesa have donated beans green from Colombian and a Burundi. Each roaster will take their pick.

On the event day (8th February), four selected judges will cup (taste) them all and finally decide which is the winner for each origin.

Coffee bags and raffle for the planet

We want to use this occasion to raise funds, splitting them between registered charity organisations that work for ongoing disaster relief and mental health support (Red Cross Australia) and environmental regeneration (Carbon Neutral Charity Fund).

All the coffee roasted by each competitor will be available for purchase during the event in 250g bags. 100% of its paid price will be donated. Any remains will be sold through our online shop with the same donation structure, excluding shipping.

There will be also a raffle with coffee equipment and more. Each coffee bag purchase on the spot gives a right to one participation (a single number). Individual raffle tickets will also be on sale, 100% of each paid price towards donation.

Thanks to these legends

This event is only made possible by the collective effort of an amazing community:

Caravela and Condesa are donating the all green coffee for this competition.

Competitors will give their time and stoke.

Judges will give us their time and insights.

Demelza Jones (Same Cup) and James Perry (James Perry Coffee) will give us their time and voice as MC’s.

Joel Cameron (West Objects Workshop) will donate his creativity and arty skills.

Aisle6ix will bring the tees printing labour.

Willie the Boatman will be donating the juice.

La Marzocco will be donating a few goodies for the raffle.

And we, the Sample Coffee crew, will be moving strings to make all this happen.