Smell, Slurp, Taste, Spit

I love Seattle. I know I have said it before, but a city that is filled with coffee lovers such as myself is the buttercream icing on the moist yellow cake.

I was lucky enough to participate in the free 3pm coffee tasting at Stumptown Coffee Roasters a couple of days ago.

If you've never been to a coffee tasting, I highly recommend it. Even your local Starbucks can do a free one if you ask. You really get to understand different coffee types, roasts and the different tastes according to where the beans are grown.

We stepped down stairs of the store front where they store roast their beans.

the roaster

To keep things simple and less boring, I'll just briefly go through what we did. 

There were about 8 different coffee beans for the tasting. All from different regions. 

Each coffee had 3 cups in front of them and a glass of water. The three cups are meant for you to be able to smell and later taste the beans three times so your pallet can really get a sense of the coffee.

Step One:

Grind the beans into each cup, take each cup and hold it close to your nose to take a deep breath. (Do not inhale grinds)

Step Two: Pour hot water over the grinds. Smell each cup immediately to be able to smell the essential oils that the hot water is releasing from the grinds.

 Allow the grinds to brew for four minutes

Step Three: "Break" the crust of the grinds to smell even more oils. While carefully circling the crust with the spoon, keep your nose close and smell. 

 Step Four: Remove the crust with two spoons and discard.

Step Five: Using a spoon, slurp in a bit of the coffee. Slurping allows more oxygen into your mouth, which allows you to taste the coffee all over your tongue. Different parts of your tongue taste different things.

Step Six: Taste all of the coffees, spitting the coffee out into a cup after each slurp. (This is so your palette doesn't get overwhelmed). You also dip your tasting spoon in the cup of water to rinse off any oils. And then taste and spit them all again!

We all talked about which coffees we liked and disliked. I surprisingly didn't really like any of them that much. I really lean towards earthy dirty and dark roasts. This tasting just so happened to be a little more tomatoey, acidic and lighter coffees.

After our tasting, we headed upstairs to get a few espresso drinks.

Look at that gorgeous machine.....

I ordered an espresso macchiato. A very delicious espresso macchiato. 

 It gave me enough energy to stay up for New Years Eve!

I LOVED the coffee tasting. It was free and a great way to spend 45 minutes. It was very similar to wine tasting.