Coffee Tasting Fun

Tasting in progress

I’m not really a coffee connoisseur. I can work up strong feelings about films and lenses, but not coffee. However, today I took part in a coffee tasting event and it was great fun. It was organised and presented by James Hoffmann from the Decaff Project. Number one son set it up. He ordered the packs of coffee beans which contained “fully caffeinated” beans and three others which had had their caffeine removed by different processes. Then, at 3:00 pm today we sat down and watched a live broadcast of the tasting process, had a go ourselves and filled in our notes. The aim was to determine whether taking caffeine out of coffee also removes all the flavour, and whether the caffeine removal process used makes a difference.

The results were interesting, at least for me. Two things stood out. Firstly, I think that my palette needs a bit of work. I could tell the difference between the samples, but not well enough to be able to reliably identify a particular one. Secondly, I think that decaf coffee is not a second class citizen where flavour is concerned. I would enjoy a decaf blend as much as the “proper coffee”.

It would be nice to think that decaf will end up a “first class citizen” where coffee is concerned, rather than the blend that they add on the end of the list to satisfy those who would prefer to avoid the caffeine hit.