Wow, what a mouthful

Episode 42

Coffee: Costa Rica La Candelilla Tarrazu El Quemado Lot. 
Special Notes: 100% Geisha
Cup Profile: Very crisp, citrus acidity, notes of lime very juicy, hint of molasses and lemon.  Very aromatic and elegant and wickedly clean.

I was quite worried when I heard about this coffee that I would be lead into loving it by how much Has Bean Steve likes this coffee, and also that I would acquire a taste for coffees with higher price tags.  Sadly(?), that wasn’t the case with this coffee at all.  In fact even completely ignoring the price tag, this was the least enjoyable coffee I have had form InMyMug in quite a while.  I would have liked to spend more time playing with this coffee to see if I could find in it what everyone else seems to love, but it ran out before I found a magic formula.

I’m going to be forced to dive into wine metaphors again, so apologies for that.  I suspect this coffee was the equivalent of touring a new world wine region such as California (the only wine region I have been to other than Sussex), and being served bigger and bolder reds, each one trying it’s best to overpower the previous one.  And then at the end of the evening, your host proudly pulling out an exquisite old style Bordeaux.  So to try and save the honour of my host, I will try and put a brave face on it.

This coffee is very floral and aromatic, with lots of brightness, with a clean crisp finish.  Actually perhaps my metaphor above is not quite right, and it is more the equivalent of switching midway through an evening from red to white.  I am actually surprised at how well that fits now that it has occurred to me.  I have often talked about identifying two broad categories of coffee, one that tastes like you would expect coffee too, with lots of chocolate, caramel, vanilla etc, which I am now going to have to avoid calling my “red wine” coffees, and bright acidic coffees, with citrus, berries, flowers etc, which are my “white wine” coffees.  Hopefully I can avoid bringing that up again as I don’t want to start pigeon holing coffees, but it is an interesting fleeting thought.  I just hope I never get sent a sparkling coffee!

I am not going to touch on the price here, as I would rather discuss that in a separate post, although whether I ever get around to doing that is debatable.