Ants in my pants

I’m feeling incredibly restless and fidgety this afternoon.  The usual cheap thrill of grossing you out with the weird and extreme things I’ve eaten has nothing on the buzz I’ve got from today’s rather conventional foodie blog experiment – a coffee tasting.

A friend had heard good things about Coffee Supreme's Thursday morning coffee tastings, so off we headed to check it out.

I’m not quite sure what I expected but, had I thought it through, then embarking upon a coffee tasting tanked up with my usual breakfast time double-shot flat white probably wasn’t the smartest idea. 

Despite my love of strong coffee, I can’t drink a double shot after around 9 am if I plan to be asleep before 2 o’clock the following morning.  Tragic but true.  Today I downed around seven shots by mid morning so heaven help me tonight.

But it was worth it because the tasting session was amazing.  Every week’s session involves different types of coffee prepared using different techniques – espresso, plunger, filter, drip, etc.  

Today’s session used Chemex
filters and five different Ethiopian,
Brazilian and Costa Rican beans
and roasts that work best for filters.

Apparently it’s important to match the beans and roasts with the right type of coffee making technique.  Today’s beans (I can’t remember their names, apart from the Ethopian yergacheffe) are delicate wee things and their flavours would be ‘squashed’ by an espresso machine’s more forceful extraction.

As much as I’d loved to have lolled about sipping upon a succession of flat whites, a coffee tasting is an academic rather than a hedonistic experience because the samples are unadorned by either milk or sugar so as to enable you to experience their true aromas and flavours. 

We found there was a surprising variation in each coffee’s acidity, aroma, mouth feel and flavour.  My favourite was the one that smelled like Whittaker’s peanut slabs!

Coffee Supreme's expert spent a good 45 minutes with us and happily answered our plethora of questions.  It was an incredibly informative session and we came out buzzing in every sense of the word.

Coffee Supreme's tasting counter:
42 Douglas St * Ponsonby * Auckland

Ph 376 2784 * www.coffeesupreme.com

So, if you can manage to skive off work or other duties on a Thursday morning between 8 and 10, and don’t want to sleep that night, then head over to Coffee 
Supreme’s wonderful weekly tasting.

But wait, there's more! At the risk of lowering the tone, I thought you'd appreciate these...

Coffee art gone mad #1: At Kenzie Cafe,
Manukau Road, Epsom.  Crema cats, pandas,
pigs, butterflies - you name it.  All
rendered in impressive detail and
almost too unbearably cute to drink.

Coffee art gone mad #2: Our beloved Prime Minister rendered
in coffee beans. A "thanks I've 'always' wanted one of those"
gift to New Zealand from the Vietnamese government
at last year's ASEAN summit.