coffee tasting

A while ago I noticed an article that said that Howard Schultz was serving the new Via (Starbucks instant) coffee at his house, and he claimed his guests couldn't tell the difference. I assumed that his guests just didn't want to claim that the emporer was naked!

However, I also thought we needed a taste test. So, we set up our taste test. In addition to coffee, Josh cooked up a superb breakfast of waffles and bacond, served with fruit salad from Heidi, and coffee cake from Miranda. We sure do eat well around here.

The coffee tasting was set up with
1. Starbucks, Via, Italian Roast coffee
compared to
Starbucks Italian Roast, freshly ground beans, prepared with
2. Stove top espresso maker
3. Mr. Coffee drip maker
4. French Press
5. Bodum vaccuum coffee maker
and finally, for a nice control
6. Nescafe instant crystals.

Running the test was a bit haphazard on our part, and next time i'd do it better. (Actually, i'd love to do a real cupping at some point, but that just didn't make sense since we weren't comparing beans to beans.) However, what we did was two waves, with each of six types of coffee served in 4 oz. dixie cups. (Dixie cups, as it turns out, are sub-optimal. They start to leak quickly, and cool off quickly, and perhaps didn't help the taste.) We had sugar and cream available, but suggested that people try things black first.

The biggest problem we ran into was in consistently preparing the coffee well. I had not used the drip maker in years, and I set it up poorly the first time around - two little ground coffee. I also used less ground coffee than i should have in the vaccuum pot (because i made a different amount of coffee than i normally do). Meanwhile, the Nescafe was made far too strongly the first time around. I think we did better with the second round of servings, but, i do think this affected our results.

People who tasted the first round all hated the Nescafe, which was really chemically and bitter. Mostly they thought the drip and vaccuum pots were just watery. The results from the second round, though, seems telling. The Nescafe still didn't go over well. The drip maker and the stove top espresso were judged to be harsh with little depth of flavor or aroma. The most favorite were the french press and vaccuum pot, which scored about evenly. The big important result, though, was that the Via scored almost as well as the winners. No one did guess that it was an instant coffee.

So, perhaps Schultz was telling the truth afterall.
And my take-away, is that I'll use the french press or vaccuum pot whenever possible (really ought to be pretty much all the time, right?), but it is worthwhile keeping the Via around for emergencies, or packing light, and storing for a while in my office.

(Pictures somewhere, i think. And, as usual, thanks to all my great friends for making it a fun morning, and for their brave palates.)