We’d like to blame Norwegian postmen for the small problems we had with the Taste of Norway event. We had asked 5 roasters in Norway to take part and all had agreed. Then began the problems: Unfortunately not all the coffee arrived on time!
Our hair was torn out.
Two roasters did manage to break the postal deadlock and get their espresso to us, and we were very excited to recieve their coffee! Tim Wendelboe sent us his espresso, as well as a bag of his new Kenya and a bag of his Aricha. Supreme Roastworks (the new kids on the block) sent us their new espresso.
Lots of people turned up to taste the offerings, and it was a real mixture of coffee people from London. We started by cupping Tim’s two coffees, and I think his Aricha was the favourite of the two by the group – though my favourite was the Kenya which we almost didn’t have enough of because I kept drinking it through the week.
Then we moved onto the espresso. Supreme’s espresso was great – tonnes of fruit, acidity and sweetness. They had “juiced” up the blend by adding a little of their Aricha lot and it really gave the shots some great top notes . We pulled it at 92C as requested, but then also took the temp up a little more. It seemed to split the group with about 60% prefering the cooler brew.
As we only had two espressos to taste we were very pleased to see Per Nordby from De Matteo who was in town. Whilst Da Matteo are Swedish and not Norwegian it still seemed ok to brew his coffee too. Per was a little unhappy that the coffee was too fresh, but it stilled pulled well and the shots were very tasty. A lot of people really enjoyed the heavier, more nutty and cocoa-y shots it produced, and it was good to have a very contrasting style of Nordic espresso as I think we sometimes get into the bad habit of talking in a general way about the style of Nordic espresso, the way we used to have the bad habit of talking generally about an origin’s flavour profile. There were a few smiles when Per revealed the contents of the blend – despite being developed very independently the components were very similar to our WBC blend. Great minds…..
To finish off was Tim Wendelboe’s espresso. Instead of having people talk about how the shots taste – which is often intimidating in a large group – we asked people to write up any notes on our whiteboard when they tasted the coffees. This worked really well and people threw down some great descriptions. Tim’s espresso was very clean and sweet, though I have to admit that I didn’t do as good a job as I wanted to pulling the shots and I had to repull a few espressos for people. Sorry Tim – I suck!
There was no clear favourite on the night – opinions split across the three espressos – though I think Supreme’s was the most unusual and divisive (in a good way!). We are really looking forward to the Taste of New Zealand, and we’ll be posting the date up on here in the next few days. It will be a ticketed event, with all of the small fee going to Bikes to Rwanda.
Thanks to everyone who attended and made it a lot of fun – we hope to see you and more soon!
A few more flickr photos here.
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Comments ( 2 )
Hey, Nice blog.
I have a friend in Sweden who may soon be working for de matteo who worked for us in Wellington. I was interested in your Taste of New Zealand event – is that coffee related?
Chers,
Matt
matt added these pithy words on
Sep 19 08 at
3:54 pm
Upon further reading –it all becomes clear!! Cheers.
matt added these pithy words on
Sep 19 08 at
3:58 pm
