Red dot or the Blue dot?!
November's subscription included two 40g bags of unidentified coffee for our subscribers to taste test – One bag was speciality coffee from an independent roaster and the other was a commodity coffee from a well-known worldwide brand.
We’ve loved watching the Dog and Hat community work to discuss the conundrum – “which is the speciality, and which is the commodity?”. Thank you for all your entries, pictures, and to Cupper Joe for hosting on online cupping guide to help people out.
We love that people used different methods - cupped, used espresso machines and V60’s to test the coffee… and we apologies to Anita and Ian who we believe are still recovering from testing the blue coffee.
Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the results:
Red Dot – Speciality Coffee
Horsham Pioneer Blend – Experimental and Progressive
- 50% Rwandan Red Bourbon – Washed – 1600masl
- 50% Ethiopian Yirgacheffe – Natural – 2000masl
- Juicy, Fruity & Sweet
- Ideal for Filter, cafetiere, aeropress and espresso
Blue Dot – Commodity Coffee
Lavazza - Caffe Espresso
- 100% Arabica blend
- No specified origin
- Intense & Velvety - Fruity & Floral
- Ideal for filter, stovetop, coffee percolators and espresso
We also have a winner from the tasting notes portion of the competition - Steve Hannigan.
Steve did a great job in not only correctly recognising the red bag as the speciality coffee, but also going into detail and identifying the presence of a naturally processed Ethiopian bean.
Congratulation Steven we will be sending you the Buddy Brew Seasonal Blend we picked up on our travels to the US in the Christmas sub!
Conclusion:
The Horsham coffee stood out at the independent roaster, and most people correctly recognised it and picked up on the sweet and fruity notes.
The Lavazza was generally identified as the commodity, and a ‘woody’ flavour note was picked up by a few people.
We hope everyone enjoyed the competition, and we’ll look to add something exciting again into the subs soon.