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Here, at Dudepins we had the pleasure to do a coffee review from our friends at Essense Coffee. They are key on being eco friendly and all natural. Back in September we shared the exciting news with you guys, and have been patiently waiting for our coffee testing program called "Be a Taster" to begin. Once it got here we have immerse ourselves in the tasting experience and we have lots to say about our reviews.
We can now give our feedback from coffee lovers ourselves to other coffee lovers around the world about Essense Coffee. As with fine wine, your taste buds will be able to identify and truly enjoy good coffee.
You too can become a coffee tester as well and joining the "Be a Tester" group. Find out more about the program at: http://essense.coffee/be-a-taster/
The Process from a Bean to a Cup
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The people behind Essense believed that coffee is not just a beverage, it's an experience that involves both the mind and body. That is brewed completely fresh.
How fresh you ask? Well the coffee bean is extracted straight from the flower, they then strip the bean at the fastest and least costly manual method. This is done by two different methods involving mechanical stripping and selective picking. Mechanical stripping is a large scale harvesting machine while selecting picking are harvest manually picked one by one. Only ripe fruit is picked thus offering the best results.
Secondly, is separating the bean from the pulp, this involves two methods; wet and dry. The wet method requires sorting the fruit, pulping, fermentation washing and drying. The dry method is a natural process where the fruit are set outside in a thin layer, and placed directly in the sunlight.
Thirdly, is transporting the coffee dean. Which is packaged in burlap bags then in containers shipped over seas. Before it reaches the customer the coffee goes through a roasting process. This steps allows for a transformation that makes the coffee ready for extraction.
Once it reaches the customer, they then grind the fresh roasted whole coffee beans making them into a ground coffee. themselves. Whole coffee beans provide a lot of flavor due to the oils in the beans. When you buy ground coffee in stores, some of the volatile oils have evaporated during the grinding process.
During the brewing process, water extracts all the flavors and aromas of the coffee. After this process came the testing. It was a blind test, and the packages where divided up into 3 sections A, B and C. It was then dived again into 3 sections, thus being 1, 2 and 3. So all together there were A1, A2, A3; B1, B2, B3;C1, C2, C3. The letter and numbers indicated different types of coffee. Since there was no name on the packages but numbers and letter, none of the final results would be corrupt.
So Why a Blind Test?
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Essense wants to introduce the world to something called sensory analysis. The goal is to break down the identifies, measures and assess the sensations produced by sensory characteristics. Tasting brings out sensorial stimuli, both flavor and fragrance. There are three important keywords that describe certain sensory signals. Such as stimuls, sensation and perception. The roles of these senses have an important role in receive sensations and color perception of the flavor and aromas. This involving sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Through our senses we have different sensations and perceptions, which allows us to evaluate coffee.
There are five main taste, bitter, sour, sweet, salty and umami. Bitter is categorized by having an unpleasant, over-extracted and extra dark roasted coffee. Sour is more on the tangy, fruity and even more wine-like flavor. Sweet coffee leaves a characteristic impression and specialized in recognizing taste. Salty is associated mainly with sodium chloride and is sensation of a savoriness. Umami is a taste described as savoriness and tastiness. It lighter then the stimulated saltiness or sweetness.
What is Cupping?
Cupping is defined as the practice of professionally sampling and tasting the coffee to ensure quality. It's to help organized thoughts and provide a means of recording information. Why is it used? Because it observes the tastes and aromas of brewed coffee. Cupping takes place from crop to cup. You don't have to be a professional coffee taster to try and identify the various flavors. We will be recording the fragrance/aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity and mouthfeel. Then the balance, overall, sweetness, clean cup and uniformity. The levels of quality are in numeric values from 5 to 10.
The Steps
- Take 10 grams of whole beans (A1, A2, A3) and take their cups or glasses, keep track of which is which with, (we used post-it notes). Use 10 grams of coffee to 6oz of boiling water.
- Start your pot of water so when your cupping table is set up and all ready to go.
- Sniff and evaluate the ground coffee from each sample.
- When the water is done boiling remove it from heat and wait 25 seconds before pouring. Pour in the order the coffee is ground. The oldest grinds gets the water first and so on.
- When pouring, mark the time and wait 3 to 4 mins as the coffee grinds start to settle. At this time you want to start evaluating.
- In 4 mins the coffee and water both have interacted and creates a thick "crust". You want to take the cupping spoon and puncture the ground crust while inhaling the aromatics that will waft up. Repeat this step on each sample.
- After the breaking of the crust, we then skim off the remaining top grounds, leaving as much liquid behind as possible.
- We then began to taste the coffee, taking spoonfuls at a time. We allowed each spoonful at a time coat our entire tongue. We moved across the table sampling many different coffee.
- While testing them out we also made sure to fill out the Cupping Sheet.
- Repeat the steps for the other two selections of coffee (B, C)
The Results
To us the cupping experience was a breeze. There was no problems getting things set up and ready to go. Our results were on a rating based thats on a scale from 5-10, with the higher the number the better.
Lets first narrow down to our favorite 3 Sample of A, B and C. To us coffee Sample A and C we're our favorites. Sample B lacked a lot of high rating. We felt that the flavor and after taste of Sample B was poor and didn't meet our standards. Sample A and C had higher categories overall. Sample A had more higher ranking in 1,2 and 3 with the highest overall in 5 categories of Balance, Overall, Sweetness, Clean Cup and Uniformity. Sample A1 and A2 had the highest rating of 9 in flavor, we tested them as being rich, musty and nutty flavor.Our favorite fragrance and aroma had to be Sample C3 with an fragrance and aroma of 8. This sample will have a malty and vanilla scent that we found to be the most pleasing of them all.
But with the highest rating in all categories is and our top favorite coffee is ...... drum role .......... Sample C3! The Fragrance/Aroma, AfterTaste, Mouthfeel, Balance, Overall, Sweetness and Uniformity had the most ratings of 8 and 9. Despite having the lowest rating in acidity of 6.5 and flavor of 7. Which to us wasn't too low to make the coffee horrible, the acidity was delicate and mild tasting and the flavor had a sweet and chocolate taste to it. The overall highest in Sample C3 is the Mouthfeel with a rating of 9, it had a velvety feel that we felt was great.
Below are our exact results of Sample C3:
Sample C3Fragrance/Aroma: 8, malty, vanilla
Flavor: 7, sweet, chocolate
Aftertaste: 8.5, clean, lingering
Acidity: 6.5, delicate,mild
Mouthfeel: 9, velvety
Balance: 8
Overall: 8
Sweetness: 8.5
Clean Cup: 6
Uniformity: 8
Final Verdict
We had a great time trying out all the Samples and as a group we bonded over the coffee tasting experience. To us Sample B wasn't our favorite but it still had decent overall ratings, making it still a good tasting coffee. Sample A, had the highest rating of 9 in a lot of it's categories. But with the overall highest rating in many of the categories was Sample C3. We felt the velvety Mouthfeel was great tasting. The balance, sweetness and uniformity was all pleasing to us. Making Sample C3 a rich gourmet tasting coffee.
Thanks Essense for letting us take part in this #coffeecupping experience.
You too can become a coffee tester as well and joining the "Be a Tester" group. Find out more about the program at: http://essense.coffee/be-a-taster/
(We are not affiliate with Essense Coffee and are not being compensated to write any reviews or to promote their product)Comments
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