Last Friday, Portland Roasting’s cupping room turned into a fruit tasting room. We were trying to discover the fruit flavors ins some of our coffees — our new Sumatra, El Salvador, Kenyan AB, Guatemala (Hue Hue) and Mexican natural. All these coffee samples tasted really fruity, so we wanted to discover what kind of fruit matched the same flavors in coffee. We launched a bunch of fruit tests and compared it to various coffee samples to determine matches.
I joined a group of experienced Portland Roasting’s coffee cuppers from all the departments – sales, production and administrative — and here is what we found out:
We were able to identify the lime-like flavors in Kenyan AB, while the Mexican Organic tasted like Fuji apple. Some said it also had a blueberry taste, and the Guatemala (Hue Hue) had a nutty taste.
Our opinions differed about the remainder of the coffees, and we all agreed that none of the fruits on the table tasted like Sumatra and El Salvador, so we will take part in another tasting soon.
It was a fun experience because I had never tasted most of the fruits. For the first time in my life I tasted kiwi, blueberry, raspberry, persimmon, plum, pear, different kinds of apples, and mandarin orange. This improves my ability to describe coffee flavors, thus making me a better cupper.
