Coffee cupping for beginners..

Last Friday, Joe and I, and the new intern, Ben, began cupping coffees together around 10am. We are going to make this a weekly habit if possible, and Ben and I are going to post some of our tasting notes to the blog. Please keep in mind that we're new at this, so we'll get better at describing what we're learning as we go...

The process of cupping coffee is a technique used to evaluate the aroma and flavor profile of coffees. It also is a great way to taste differences in different coffees by trying them side by side. Subtle nuances in each coffee, that might not be noticed or remembered if you waited a few days to try against a different coffee and compare them, are more easily recognized during a cupping. You can cup just to learn about new or different coffees, or you can use it as a tool to detect defects in the coffee, or to help in the creation of new blends of two or more coffees.

The first thing you do in a coffee cupping is grind a small amount of each coffee and put them into a small glass. You usually want a few glasses with each coffee in it, in case you get one cup of grinds that has bad beans in it (from being burnt or just defective). We chose to cup 4 coffees on Friday, our Organic Mexico, Organic Nicaragua, Organic Guatemala and Organic Colombia Reserva. You can see in this picture the 3 glasses of each of the 4 coffees.


We first smelled the coffee grinds in each glass. This is the "fragrance" of the coffee. I couldn't tell too much of a difference with most of them, although I thought the Guatemala smelled a bit more flowery. The next step was to boil water and fill each cup up 1/2 way, and smell them all again. By the way, each cupper smells all 3 of each coffee, as the quality control I mentioned above in case one of the cups contains defective beans. The fragrance is much more pronounced after adding the water, and even beginners like me can start noticing large differences.


The next step is to fill the cups up with water and let them sit for a minute or two. The coffee hardens a bit at the top of the cup, forming a "crust" of part coffee part water. You then "break the crust" with a spoon, holding your nose right above the spoon and cup, and take a big whiff. This allows you to taste the aroma of the coffee. It is pretty potent compared with the previous smells you've gotten up until then.


The final part of the cupping is tasting for flavor. Here you place some of each coffee in the spoon and slurp it into your mouth, attempting to get the coffee to hit every taste bud on your tongue. This should allow you to detect all sorts of different qualities that the coffees possess, the most important being taste, acidity, body and aftertaste. Joe gave us up a flavor profile wheel for the occasion since Ben and I are inexperienced at this and were having trouble identifying the flavors that were coming through. We took notes of most of this, although mine at first were more about the process than the actual profiles of the coffees. In the end, I did learn a LOT about what kind of coffees I like and dislike.


Here are my notes from the final flavor cupping:

Organic Mexico:
Harsh, dirty first taste. Full body, medium acidity and smooth aftertaste (compared with the original, harsh taste).

Organic Nicaragua:
Clean taste. Light/medium body, chocolatey aftertaste.

Organic Guatemala:
Flowery taste, light body, high acid, winey aftertaste.

Organic Colombia Reserva:Clean, balanced flavor, medium body. Medium acidity with a sweet finish.

No surprise that the Colombia Reserva was my favorite here. The fact that I did not enjoy the Guatemala at all (keep in mind that I DO like this coffee when brewed normally) was a surprise, as was the harshness of the first sip of Mexico, which is another one of my favorite coffees. I found from this tasting that I enjoy medium to full-bodied coffees, and tend to want more from a low-bodied brew.

Overall, this was a really informative process. I'll be taking better notes next time, as I won't be so wrapped up in the actual cupping process, and hope to pass on some good info to you the reader!

Best,
Matt

Mother's Day Coffee Sales!

It's almost Mother's Day and FCN has unveiled a new Mother's Day gift package. The package includes a pound each of Jamaica Blue Mountain: Moy Hall, Organic Colombia Reserva and Organic Sumatra. Three of our best coffees for Mom! You can check it out here!

We also took 20% off of the El Salvador, another one of our popular premium coffees.

Good news ahead: we have a new website design that will launch in about a week. We've been working on it for the past couple weeks, and it's ALMOST ready to launch. It's pretty exciting for us, and I'm hoping to have a sneak peak posted to the blog at the end of the week.

Shelburne Supermarket demo this weekend

Ahh back to the cold Vermont winter. Isn't spring right around the corner? Hopefully so!



Joe is in Mexico riding around on a giant power boat, so now it's my turn to watch the shop while he's gone.

We have a bunch of demos coming up in the next few weeks, the first of which is this Saturday, 10am, at Shelburne Supermarket in Shelburne, VT. I'll be giving out samples of our Organic French Roast, and Organic Colombia Reserva for about 4 hours or so. Please come down and say hi! After that I'll be moving in to City Market for 4 weeks in a row, and also doing demos at Hunger Mountain Co-Op, Rutland Area Food Co-Op, Middlebury Natural Food Co-Op and the North Country Co-Op over in Plattsburgh, NY.

In other news, the Customer Favorites gift package is 20% off on the store, here. That's a pretty good deal so if you need to send someone some fresh Vermont coffee, you know where to click!

Hope to see some of you at the demo....

Matt

Where do you find coffee in the Bahamas?

There comes a point in January or February where everyone in Vermont freaks out and starts buying plane tickets to "anywhere that's not so damn cold." In my case, I bought a ticket to the island of Eleuthera, in the Bahamas, to join my fiance and her family for their yearly winter vacay.

The Bahamas are beautiful, especially Eleuthera which is not built up and developed like so many of the bigger islands. We have an old, fun house, right on the beach!

Here is the view out of our bedroom:


So the one problem the family, who arrived a few days before us, ran into was "where do get coffee in the Bahamas?" Most of the stores around here have Maxwell House, and Foldgers and that is about it. This does NOT do the trick for the fam, who are all tried and true coffee addicts, since shortly after birth. So, I got the phone call: "Matt, help!"

Now, we are all set to go with 10 pounds of Organic Colombia Reserva, a bodum grinder, and a French press to boot. Waking up here this morning with a fresh French press was about the best thing I could ask for. I want to give a special shout out to Joe for roasting such awesome coffee, and for watching the shop while I'm gone. Thanks mon frere! (Readers: don't feel TOO bad for him: he is going to Mexico the day I get back!)

The moral of this story: next time you are in the Bahamas and need to find coffee, call us up and we'll mail some down to ya!

Have a great week, to anyone that's reading this. Joe is going to take over for a couple days on the blog front, and I'll cya when we're back in town.

Matt

Coffee Profile: Organic Colombia Reserva

We are starting to profile a different coffee that we sell at freshcoffeenow.com every couple weeks. I'm going to try and get info and pictures of the farms, and Joe will cup the coffee and give us the low down. Our first coffee profile is on the Organic Colombia Reserva, a coffee we started selling about 6 months ago. In that time it's become one of our best sellers, and it is now being sold in several stores in Vermont.

The coffee is grown in Bucaramanga, Colombia, at Hacienda el Roble. The companies owner, Oswaldo, is shown here checking his crops. The coffee is actually named after the founder of the estate, Don Telmo, who passed away in 1932. This estate grows it's coffee under shade, is certified organic, and has to date built a church and a school on it's site, for the families that live and work there. Their socially conscious approach to farming, combined with a deep respect for the environment, makes them someone we enjoy promoting.

Joe, after cupping the coffee, had this to say: "The Reserva has an intensely rich chocolaty aroma. It's medium to full bodied, with a smooth, complex caramelly mouthful. There is a rich and balanced finish."

If you've had the Colombia, please let us know what you think. We think it's one of the best values on the site! It's on sale for a couple more days, here. We are going to have a Leap Year sale on the 29th, with a lot of coffees getting a deep discount, and the Jamaican Moy Hall is already discounted (for 2 more days!).

Enjoy,
Matt

FCN is on Facebook!

For any of our friends and clients that are members of Facebook, please join our Facebook group by clicking here. We will be posting a lot more pictures of the roasting facility and the farms we get our coffee from there.

Joe has been cupping coffees in the office and our next blog will be a review of our Organic Colombia Reserva coffee. This is one of our favorites, and we are excited to post a bunch of pictures from our friend Richard @ Royal Coffee, that visited the estate last month.

In other news, www.freshcoffeenow.com has a couple of our premium coffees on sale, (Yemen, Colombia) as well as 20% off the Peaberry Sampler Package, which is a great gift idea.

Dont forget to come see us at City Market this Friday, at 11:30 AM..

Matt

Weekend demo's are a success!

This weekend's demos @ Hunger Mountain and Shelburne Supermarket were a success. Thanks so much to everyone that came out and drank coffee with us. We demoed our Organic Nicaragua coffee, our Organic French Roast, and the Organic Colombia Reserva.

Our next demo will be this Friday at City Market in downtown Burlington during lunch time. Come see us! We're signing everyone that visits our demo station up for a drawing to win a free pound of coffee. We're also going to start giving away coupons to use on the website to people that come to the demos.

Here's a couple pics from Hunger Mountain on Saturday:






Here's Joe hamming it up with some coffee nerds about the difference between our French Roast, and your average burnt coffee that the competition labels "French Roast."














Now a crowd begins to grow as people smell freshly brewed coffee!









Cya soon!
Matt