Frozen Coffee Beans

This one's a first for me and it's always interesting to hear what "real coffee drinkers" do with our coffee!

I had a conversation some months ago with this customer who was regularly travelling backwards and forwards to Spain (we'll call him Chris). He was telling me that he couldn't find any coffee locally that tasted as good as this Spanish coffee which was dark roasted to the point of being carbonised. He felt that it made great coffee and wondered why we didn't sell such a coffee.

My reaction was not quite of horror, but "mild" surprise that he could enjoy a coffee that had all it's individuality roasted out of it. For all I knew it could be the cheapest coffee in the world, nobody would know. Being a business that only stocks speciality coffee I tried to explain the intricacies of what we offered. Anyway he went away and I didn't see him for a number of months.

A week ago I happened to be in our shop and there he was buying our Bologne Espresso coffee. I jokingly said have you run out of your Spanish coffee? To which he replied that since our conversation he had been buying our coffee non stop. Having given him my views on dark roasted Spanish coffee he had decided to change to us.

The secret though to our coffee tasting great for him though is that he brews the coffee from frozen. Apparently he takes our beans home and immediately puts them in the freezer. When he goes to make his coffee in a stove top espresso maker, he grinds the frozen beans and then brews the coffee immediately. He tells me that this gives the best coffee taste ever. He's tried not freezing the beans but says that the flavour isn't nearly as good.

It just goes to show you, even after 20 years in the business you can still learn from your customers idiosyncrasies!