A new After Dark coffee creation

Because we try always to be consistent in our offering to our customers we don't tend to change our coffee blends that often. Today, however was one of those days. I had decided some time ago that we needed to improve on a line of coffee we call "After Dark". The decision had already been taken that this coffee should become a certified sustainable coffee.

The coffee we reviewed was from the Daterra farm in Brazil, all of whose coffee is both Rainforrest and Utz Kapeh certified.

I tried three different coffee selections from this farm, and roasted them up on our sample roaster to anything between 210 & 220 degrees centigrade.

Now that doesn't sound like a huge difference, however the result in the cup shows marked distinctions. What it did highlight is that here in Jersey we struggle to achieve a great tasting coffee at roast temperatures around 210 degrees centigrade. I think it must have something to do with the local water and the way in which it reacts to our coffee. It could also of course be nothing other than our own particular preferences.

I ended up with 6 samples which I tasted with Anya and Stefan. The coffee has a wonderfully sweet aroma, however we found that the lower temperature roasted samples didn't have the fullness in the cup that we were searching for.

We whittled the selection down to 3 coffees, funnily enough each was a particular pick from Daterra, and made up three cafetieres (French press) of coffee, this being the most popular domestic coffee maker in our Island.

Having gone into the tasting thinking that we would choose a medium roasted coffee, we came away most impressed with the darkest roasted sample. It had a rich chocolatey smoothness that really fitted the bill, and is a great contrast to our "Morning Coffee" offering.

It's great that even after 18 years in this business, the coffee can still throw up such wonderful surprises.

When you get a chance give our new sustainable After Dark coffee a try, your guests will still be talking about it long after the party's over!