Brewing a good coffee can't be that hard... can't it?
So after coming back home from Jamaica and ordering all of the gadgets I was finally ready to brew my very own first coffee. However I didn’t feel that confident about whole process and didn’t want to spoil the Jamaican coffee so I also ordered some other types of beans to polish my skills before the real deal.
Coffee Beans
First type of beans I bought were the ones from Panama which is a country that produce beans which are used for barista championship. Of course I didn’t go for the Geisha ones which are extremely pricey, it wouldn’t make sens since I couldn’t used them properly for sure but I guessed that a middle ground ones should be good enough in my case. They should produce decent outcome not matter how bad my skills are and that would be good enough for the start.
First thing I noticed when I got the package, which for the record I totally missed when ordering, was such a high level of acidity of the beans, which made me kinda worried. I really hate it when there is a sour after taste in my coffee and I immediately get an stomach ache afterwards. However this time I was kinda surprised, but more about it a bit later. The coffee itself looked normal and the smell was really strong, which grew a even more intense and interesting after grinding. It was in clear dark brown color, even though it was medium roasted.
For my brewing method I choose the one with 3-step saturation which was the standard one for Chemex and which I will be changing in the following posts where I look for perfect one for me. The coffee turned out really dark, almost black when it comes to color, which actually made me kinda worried that it might also be really bitter. Anything else made it look like a normal coffee for me till this point with the standard smell and consistency.
Finally we got to the most important point which is the actual process of tasting the coffee. As I wrote beforehand I was kinda worried about the acidity of those beans, but actually I was kinda surprised. There was none acid aftertaste. It for sure was really bitter which made me think about adding some sugar, however after few more sips it started tasting a bit better and I never added anything in the end. Overall can’t be really precise what didn’t work out for me here, apart from the fact that it just wasn’t the taste I was looking for after the Jamaican Blue Mountain, but took I it as a valuable lesson in my further journey.
Coffee Rating
Since it’s first time I introduce this rating section I would like to explain how it will work. Everything will be in scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is my least favorite (doesn’t mean it’s bad!) and 10 is my personal best experience. Since especially in the begging I don’t have much of a reference they might be biased towards the Jamaican Blue Mountain, so that’s why I also added after time rating, which would not only check how the flavor changes as it’s getting older but also become my reevaluation of the coffee as a whole. Reasons for every note will be in the text previous to this section but there will also be one sentence summing up here.
- Flavor – 5 – nothing I could say about it bad or good, tasted like a coffee I guess.
- Bitterness – 4 – was as bitter as color suggested at the start, but got better after few sips.
- Acidity – 7 – even though it has a really high level marked on the packaging it’s actually didn’t give any sour after taste.
- Sweetness – 2 – there should be vanilla and cherry flavor in it but couldn’t feel them at all
- Initial rating – 5 – my first brew in Chemex coffee so I will put it in the middle since it was different than what I expected, but wasn’t anything bad or special
- After time rating – 6 – after few months now that I am also writing this review, it tastes a bit better. Now bitterness isn’t so shocking but the flavors/sweetness are still standard/not present at all. However I could say that being kept in the MiiR coffee container didn’t reduce beans quality at least for me.
Conclusion
To tell the truth I have no recommendation to give when it comes to this coffee. Since this is the first one of many that I will be tasting in the following months/years, maybe when I will come back to this one someday, I will update the post or write a new one while also having something to compare it to and then there will be more to say in this section. For now, it’s just a normal coffee that you could enjoy without expecting too much.
