Branded Coffee
A few days ago a customer asked whether I could help her to find a coffee she liked. From her bag she produced a foreign valve pack with no English information. She knew we wouldn’t stock the brand itself but she wanted to know if we had anything like it.
I have a trained nose so I asked if I could have a smell to see if I could perhaps find a close match with our Arabica beans. One sniff and I knew the problem I was faced with: the coffee was a blend of Arabica & Robusta beans. The blend smelt closer to some freshly brewed instant coffee than to any of the fresh ground Arabica beans we had.
When I told her we had nothing to match, she wasn’t convinced and was a bit disappointed. I opened up a few of the coffee tins so she could have a smell of the beans inside. After trying a few she agreed that we had nothing close to what she wanted.
The next day one of our regular customers came in and told us she was glad to be back. When we asked why, she told us her story. Her son had come home to visit and he had just been to Italy. He had mentioned to her that he liked a certain brand of coffee while he was over there (I won’t name the brand) so she went out and purchased a pack.
When she made the coffee using her espresso maker, her son and she agreed that it was the worst coffee this side of instant that they had ever had. She said she couldn’t wait to get home to her usual blend of Arabica coffee beans so she could make herself a real cup of coffee. Before she left I asked her if the coffee from the pack tasted more like a gravy mix than coffee. ‘Yes! That’s exactly what it tasted like,’ she replied. I informed her that was because the coffee she purchased contained some Robusta beans (I have since found out it in fact contains 20% Robusta).
Robusta beans have a very different taste to Arabica. They tend to be strong both in caffeine and taste. The taste is not considered by most experts to be totally desirable as they lack the complexity of the flavour of Arabica beans. Robusta beans have a commercial use in blends where its full body can give lighter coffees a greater kick. Robusta is commonly used in instant coffee where the processes used help to reduce its more prominent flavour.
Aside from instant coffees, I have yet to try Robusta coffee beans on their own. Although it has been some time since I have tasted instant coffee, I recall not being particularly fond of the flavours. I’m a little scared to go back and try it as fresh coffee but for the sake of this blog I think I will need to go back to the stuff, for science.
I have a trained nose so I asked if I could have a smell to see if I could perhaps find a close match with our Arabica beans. One sniff and I knew the problem I was faced with: the coffee was a blend of Arabica & Robusta beans. The blend smelt closer to some freshly brewed instant coffee than to any of the fresh ground Arabica beans we had.
When I told her we had nothing to match, she wasn’t convinced and was a bit disappointed. I opened up a few of the coffee tins so she could have a smell of the beans inside. After trying a few she agreed that we had nothing close to what she wanted.
The next day one of our regular customers came in and told us she was glad to be back. When we asked why, she told us her story. Her son had come home to visit and he had just been to Italy. He had mentioned to her that he liked a certain brand of coffee while he was over there (I won’t name the brand) so she went out and purchased a pack.
When she made the coffee using her espresso maker, her son and she agreed that it was the worst coffee this side of instant that they had ever had. She said she couldn’t wait to get home to her usual blend of Arabica coffee beans so she could make herself a real cup of coffee. Before she left I asked her if the coffee from the pack tasted more like a gravy mix than coffee. ‘Yes! That’s exactly what it tasted like,’ she replied. I informed her that was because the coffee she purchased contained some Robusta beans (I have since found out it in fact contains 20% Robusta).
Robusta beans have a very different taste to Arabica. They tend to be strong both in caffeine and taste. The taste is not considered by most experts to be totally desirable as they lack the complexity of the flavour of Arabica beans. Robusta beans have a commercial use in blends where its full body can give lighter coffees a greater kick. Robusta is commonly used in instant coffee where the processes used help to reduce its more prominent flavour.
Aside from instant coffees, I have yet to try Robusta coffee beans on their own. Although it has been some time since I have tasted instant coffee, I recall not being particularly fond of the flavours. I’m a little scared to go back and try it as fresh coffee but for the sake of this blog I think I will need to go back to the stuff, for science.
posted by The Coffee Bloke | 9:08 pm
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