Ona Coffee

devin loong of Ona Coffee

Devin Loong of Ona Coffee wins second ASCA Southern Region Brewers Cup Championship 

Devin Loong of Ona Coffee has won his second Australian Specialty Coffee Association (ASCA) Southern Region Brewers Cup Championship. David Train of Code Black Coffee placed second and Shen Choy of Cote Terra Coffee Roasters placed third in the competition, held at Criteria Coffee in Melbourne. “I’m so happy I got to use the same coffee I used at this year’s National Brewers Cup Championship and do it justice,” Devin says. “I was really sick at nationals. I couldn’t smell the aroma nor taste the coffee, and I had no voice. I had to reply on my team to present the flavour descriptors. Thankfully, I did well and I did it justice today.”
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Ona Coffee releases WBC-winning CM Selections Tasting Flight

Ona Coffee has released the CM Selections Tasting Flight, which includes several coffees used at the 2018 World Barista Championship (WBC). The tasting flight is made up of three 200-gram bags of coffee from the CM Selections series, each roasted to suit a different preparation method. The series, sourced from Project Origin, takes its name from carbonic maceration, the process used to create each coffee’s flavour profile. This method uses controlled fermentation to develop the flavour profiles of each coffee.
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Ordermentum helps Ona Coffee deal with demand

Since Ona Coffee Founder Sasa Sestic’s victory at the 2015 World Barista Championship (WBC), the Canberra-based café and roastery has reach a new level of prominence. “We have tripled the staff [in Adelaide] to meet the demand and popularity of our coffee,” says Jennie McClelland, Administration and Customer Service at Ona Coffee. “We are supplying coffee to cafés across Australia, including Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart. This growth really consumes a lot of our focus.”
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World Barista Champion Agnieszka Rojewska makes history

When sports champions win a title, they usually pop a giant champagne bottle, enjoy a fancy meal, or hit the after party to bask in their winning glory. For this year’s World Barista Champion Agnieszka Rojewska, the celebrations were a little more subdued.  “I ate Ben & Jerry’s icecream – we don’t have many flavours in Poland – and went to sleep. I was super tired,” she says.  It had been a huge week of competition for 55 national barista champions from across the globe. Each put their heart and soul into their routine, which represented far more than the 15-minute performance at Rai Centre at World of Coffee in Amsterdam in June. 
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Ona Coffee to host WBC-winning coffee cupping

Ona Coffee Marrickville will host a cupping session of Project Origin’s Carbonic Maceration (CM) Selections series on 2 October. The cupping session will allow participants to taste coffees from the different categories of the CM series, including Jasper, Indigo and Diamond coffees. CM Selection coffees exist in washed and natural processes and involve the careful control of specific yeasts during fermentation to create particular flavour experiences.
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Ona Coffee Marrickville

Opening day of Ona Coffee Marrickville was a celebration of the Canberra-based roaster’s foray into the Sydney market, or any market outside of the Australian Capital Territory for that matter.  The doors to the newly developed space were wide open and guests flooding through the door were a combination of the industry’s top influences, baristas, roasters, locals who had heard about ‘the new kid on the block’, and some four-legged friends bathing in the morning sun while eyeing off a tray of donuts on the bench.
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The big freeze: why there’s no longer a barrier to coffee freshness

Freezing roasted coffee is gaining momentum and putting a stop to stale beans once and for all. Ona Coffee explains why age is no barrier to coffee freshness. Imagine going into a café in five years time and asking the barista for a look at the vintage menu of coffees on offer: a 2013 Panama Geisha, Sasa Sestic’s 2015 World Barista Championship (WBC) winning carbonic maceration-processed coffee, or perhaps the number one Brazil Cup of Excellence coffee from 2018 is more to your liking.  By traditional standards, consuming such coffee years later would prove stale and lifeless in the cup, but what if they were frozen? It’s a concept Ona Coffee is exploring in order to preserve and extended coffee’s shelf life, and by all accounts, it’s got potential.  George Howell saw that early on. He started freezing green coffee in 2001 to help preserve freshness and flavour, and at Re;Co 2017 he presented a series of vintage harvests from 2012 and 2013 to demonstrate how freezing coffee could preserve its integrity, telling the audience “by all standards, these coffees should have been dead and buried”. But they weren’t. They were very much alive.
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Danny Wilson of Ona Coffee wins Australian CIGS Championship

Danny Wilson of Ona Coffee is the 2018 Australian Coffee in Good Spirits Champion. Jay Lee and Chanho Hong, both of Normcore Coffee Roasters, placed second and third respectively.   “It’s super exciting to win,” Danny says, Senior Roaster at Ona Coffee. “I had the chance to go to Seoul, South Korea with Hugh Kelly assist in his WBC preparation last year, which was pretty inspiring, and now I get to represent Australia on the world stage. It’s amazing.” Danny has competed in the barista competitions for the past five years and placed sixth in the Australian Barista Championship finals in 2017.   He attempted the Australian Coffee in Good Spirits Championship (CIGS) four years ago, and was thrilled to hear of its return.
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Project Origin expands into Korea

Project Origin has announced its first official venture into Korea. With distribution partners in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and an office in Shanghai, Project Origin Founder Sasa Sestic says the establishment of Project Origin Korea is the next organic step in the company’s growth. 
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Ona Coffee to serve John Gordon’s WBC coffee

Ona Coffee Marrickville will serve John Gordon’s 2018 World Barista Championship (WBC) coffee this Saturday 7 July. Early birds to the cafe from 8am will have the chance to try the milk-based coffee John used to place sixth at this year’s WBC final in Amsterdam. The coffee is from Project Origin’s CM Selections from Ethiopia, called Jasper. 
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