At last! Time for the second review of the The Coffee Warehouse coffees, we thoroughly enjoyed doing Part 1 and we’re all looking forward to doing Part 2.
A quick recap, we were supplied with the following three blends;
- Coffee Blend 2 – Java Jive
- Coffee Blend 4 – The Brazilian Mistress
- Coffee Blend 5 – Espresso Delight
We reviewed ‘Espresso Delight’ in Part 1 and will be diving into ‘Java Jive’ and ‘The Brazilian Mistress’ for Part 2.
We used the same brewing methods, ie the ‘Gefu Lorenzo Manual Coffee Grinder’ and a ‘Rok Espresso Maker’ and the same reviewers, in the hope that we minimized any factors that may have affected the tasting.
The Coffees
Over the course of several days we brewed Short Blacks, Long Blacks and Lattes both with and without sugar or honey. We did not mix the blends on any particular day, we felt this gave us a good separation between tasting and letting our palates return to neutral between tastings.
The first thing to note is the ‘Brazilian Mistress’, is a stronger blend than ‘Java Jive’. The ‘Brazilian Mistress’ is a straight forward strong coffee with not much variation from the beginning of the taste and the after taste. This is neither good or bad, it is just a characteristic of this blend.
The ‘Java Jive’ offers some more subtleties across the tasting range, some noticed berry type flavours, others more a caramel tinge, it is very difficult to accurately describe a taste, suffice to say that it offered more complexities than the Mistress.
The Results
Overall the results were interesting, previously with the ‘Espresso Delight’ everyone liked all the coffees brewed but with different choices for the best style of coffee for that blend. For example our younger palate preferred the ‘Espresso Delight’ as a Latte, whereas the more jaded taste buds preferred it as Short Black.
Interestingly the opinions in this tasting were more marked.
The younger palate preferred the ‘Java Jive’ over the ‘Brazilian Mistress’ in all cases and put a ‘Java Jive’ Latte at the top of her list.
The more jaded palates were also split with one preferring a short black ‘Java Jive’ and the other a short black ‘Brazilian Mistress’.
Summary
So there you go, there’s no accounting for taste!
I believe this is a good thing, as it indicates to me that you can tune your choice of blends to your preferred style of coffee. If you are the sort of person that on some days prefers a Latte and on others wants a Short Black, then go with the ‘Espresso Delight’, or if you only drink one style, then experiment until you find one that suits you.
For our younger palate that would be ‘Java Jive’ as a Latte, for the older hands it would be Short Blacks made with ‘Java Jive’ for one and ‘Brazilian Mistress’ for the other.
Which would I choose? Well, I’d be happy with any of them. I’d probably go for ‘Espresso Delight’ around holiday times when I’m enjoying coffee with friends and for myself it would be the Short Black ‘Brazilian Mistress’ coffees all the way.
For You to buy
Clearly The Coffee Warehouse people have created their own distinctive and unique range of high quality coffees.
True to their Artisan background, the “hands on” detail separates them from the many massed produced, marketing driven coffees that, while acceptable, do not offer the distinctive passion for character and quality of The Coffee Warehouse team.
The Coffee Warehouse products are available online across Australia. They are worth following.
Contact: andrew@coffeewarehouse.com.au
To Buy and for the full selection: www.coffeewarehouse.com.au
Coffee review and tasting by Simon Cusack and the Spice Roads team
