To kick off 2023, we, Evelyn and Tanja, the new team behind MishkiYaku, were lucky enough to both spend time in our home country of Ecuador and decided to enjoy our first coffee tasting together.
Everyone who deals with coffee has probably asked themselves this question at least once: how do you recognize good coffee, how do you recognize not so good coffee and how do you recognize great coffee? This question is not so easy to answer. Because even though we all drink coffee almost every day, most of us probably don't know what makes good coffee and what to look for when enjoying it. This can be answered by a professional taster - also called a Q-grader in the coffee business. These are people trained at special schools who have learned to taste fine nuances in coffee and who can tell you whether the coffee has been grown, treated and roasted correctly. Every now and then, these Q-Grader schools offer outsiders the opportunity to attend small seminars and basic courses.
Our adventure started at the Botanica Coffee Lab. It is located in Quito at an altitude of about 2800 meters and is run by Camila Khalifé. The lab exists since 2020.
A long row of cups is set up in front of you. A different bean in each cup of coffee. All ground in the same way and brewed with the same amount of water at the same temperature.
The first thing was to classify the aroma of the coffee. Then the taste on the palate, the taste on the tongue and throat. What comes to mind? Which aromas and flavors do we recognize? What memories do these impressions awaken? Where do these impressions take one when I close my eyes and let myself drift?
A journey, not only through the universe of coffee aromas, but a journey into past memories, everything that the brain stores and reactivates as soon as the senses of smell and taste are engaged and nudge the link to the past. Feelings of joy, euphoria, but also sadness arose in one. A carousel of feelings, if you let it. And if no link could be established at all, then it was new little taste explosions that resembled intoxication and in turn were stored forever in the network of the little gray cells and connected with this year's visit to Quito.
One is amazed at how easy it is, after only a few attempts, to not only taste differences, but actually taste intensity and quality.
In the various coffee samples we were also presented with those that did not meet the highest standards - samples that were "defective" in some way. For example, beans that were overlaid or beans that had not matured long enough. Of course, these also had to be tasted out. A difficult task - we feared - but, who would have thought it, both Evelyn and I always recognized the culprits. These were then no colorful aroma storms, full of colorful Gesckmacksblitzes, but the samples were flat, monochrome, earthy, woody - awakened only a few associations and you just wanted to quickly return to the "fuller" samples. One is amazed at how quickly one's taste buds adapt and how quickly and easily one learns to recognize individual varieties and qualities.
This made us proud, of course, because we learn every day and always want to be able to select only the best of the best.
Our conclusion of the day: even though our taste buds were put to a hard test n, it was not as hard as we initially thought. Coffee tasting is not witchcraft. ough there may be experts who are probably still able to detect a hint of cherry in a sea of mint, even laymen can easily distinguish good coffee from bad coffee - you just have to try both once.
