By James Buckley

Project Origin caused a stir at this week’s World Of Coffee exhibition in Dubai, attracting significant international interest to its first public cupping of nitrogen-flush processed coffees from Africa.

Dozens of coffee buyers and roasters attended the session, hosted by our head of international sales, Yanina Ferreyra, who attended the expo as part of her three-month business trip to the Middle East and Africa.

The purpose of the cupping was to compare the profile effects of our world-renowned signature CM process with our newly trialled signature Nitrogen process.

Specifically she showcased Koke Nitrogen Natural Indigo 0725 and Koke Nitrogen Natural Jasper 0925 from Ethiopia, and Maguta Nitrogen Indigo Lot L1 and Maguta Nitrogen Jasper Competition Lot Gus from Kenya, all roasted fresh for the occasion using a Nucleus Link. We worked in collaboration with the teams at Primrose and Maguta Estate respectively to produce these lots and present them on the table.

Nitrogen flushing adds nitrogen gas to an enclosed environment, pushing out oxygen and slowing down fermentation of the coffee cherries, which – through our experience – we believe allows for the development of more complex and refined flavours without losing the body, tactile or balance of the profile.

“We’ve been using nitrogen in Panama before and this is the first time we apply it to Africa,” Yanina said.

“It was great last year we were able to do it in Ethiopia and Kenya, and we found it was giving us great results.

“The feedback so far has been diverse, and like when a band releases a new album there’s always fans of the original hits [carbonic maceration], and there are always people who love the new stuff.

“We were super excited to launch them, to show the customers what these coffees were doing but also to be able to compare so they could taste coffees that were done with CO2 in the tank, and the exact same process but as nitrogen in the tank.

“We had a lot of our existing clients there, but we had a lot of curious new people from the trade show. It was very nice to connect with some new roasters as well over some very delicious coffees.”

Almost 2000 brand names from 78 countries were represented at the annual Dubai Coffee exhibition, which attracted 17,000 visitors over three days.

Yanina traveled to the region in early January armed with a Nucleus Link, which allowed her to roast green coffee beans on the road in preparation for the exhibition.

“I cannot travel without one any more, I was able to roast the samples at the hotel,” the 2019 Australian Brewers Cup champion said.

“It’s important to say I have no roasting experience and I’m not a coffee roaster but by just following some simple instructions from the app, I was able to roast samples. I presented the roasters with a few different options – I know that roasters love to understand coffees deeply and love to be able to see things at their maximum potential.

“It was great we were able to show them a variety of roasts. Sometimes you go to a cupping table and you think this is it, but this is not it, coffee can express itself in many different ways depending on how you roast it.

“You can never make a coffee a lot better, but you can definitely ruin it with a roast. Or you can enhance and highlight different areas of that coffee so it was great to even have that flexibility to be able to show roasters different options.”

Nucleus was represented at the exhibition by Sam Corra and Angus Mackie, who spent three days showing off the company’s range of sophisticated coffee tools including the Link, and the NCD Pulse.

Sam, the general manager of Nucleus, created the Link to make roasting more accessible to the coffee industry, using his extensive experience as a roaster to drive the need for accessible roasting.

“Whether you’re a producer, barista, cafe owner or a roaster, it’s just making sure we could have the translation of the complexity accessible to anyone who needs to roast coffee,” Sam said.

“The biggest challenge is when you travel to an expo and you’re trying to showcase coffees. The producer’s done their job but the issue with coffee is traveling with it, moving around with it, it’s a volatile product that can rapidly change. […]

“The issue I saw over 18 years of working in coffee was that coffee roasting had progressed to one point but it still required skillset and knowledge of the user to operate the machine. You had people who are not coffee roasters needing to roast coffee but not having any clue or skillset how to do it correctly.”

World Of Coffee Dubai 2025 wrapped up on a high note for Project Origin, when Aldi Nugroho won the UAE Barista Championship. Aldi was representing the Espresso Lab, a long-term client of Project Origin, and we loved being present to support them.