Coffee Cupping at Cofi-Com

Louise and I attended a coffee cupping, or coffee tasting at our green bean supplier Cofi-com Trading hosted by Elizabeth. Coffee cupping is the practice of observing the tastes and aromas of brewed coffee. What a fabulous journey we went on from the winey tastes of Ethiopia, sweet aromas of Guatemala, fruity kenya to the humble earthy tones of PNG.

Personal favourite was the Blue Batak from Sumatra, it had a beautiful sweet and malty taste and the raw bean was a lovely deep jade green colour - looks like we could have a new single origin at la Casa in 2015!

Some interesting insights I'd like to share: In Indonesia, particularly Sumatra, they use a wet hulled process to remove the hulls of arabica coffee. This process they call Giling Basah, literally translated as "wet grinding". In this method, the farmer picks ripe coffee cherry, pulps off the skin and either dries it immediately for one day, or lets it sit overnight in a bucket (with our without water), then washes it the next day and dries it. In either case, the coffee is partially dried with some or all of the mucilage clinging to the parchment-covered seed. It is then sold at a local market to a coffee processor. The coffee processor hull the coffee in a semi-wet state, which gives the beans this unique bluish-green appearance. This method is thought to reduce acidity and increase body, resulting in the classic Indonesian cup profile.