That Tasted Like Ash

Monday night’s workshop went over great and I just wanted to thank everyone for coming out! Alex, this month’s host, put out six sample cups for us to compare: One filled with 100% Brazil Fazenda Tijuco Preto; one filled with 100% Brand Echs Italian roasted coffee; four others with varying mixtures of the two. Then he put out banana, white chocolate, 60% chocolate, 100% dark chocolate, biscotti and orange peel. The goal was to put the coffee and food in order of sweetest to bitterest and then pair the foods with the coffees.

What we didn’t expect was how quickly Brand Echs would pollute the lighter roasted Tijuco Preto. There ended up being one "sweet" coffee on the table and five varyingly bitter ones. The 100% dark roast tasted awful.

In the food pairing only the white chocolate managed to redeem the bitterest cup. The orange peel went well with the Brazil but otherwise there didn’t seem to be much agreement, except in the most general sense that the more bitter the coffee the sweeter you had to go with the food. So I guess we were actually pairing to roast flavor more than coffee flavor .... hmm. I sense a followup workshop in the near future. Alex, are you listening?