How to pick a favourite coffee

Oversimplified, maybe, but gives you a good idea of what you’ll be getting.

One of my ambitions with Danelaw is to make great coffee more approachable, by breaking down some of the barriers we accidentally construct.

It’s fair to say that if I start talking about an anaerobic natural processed coffee to another coffee taster, each of us would have a decent idea of what that coffee tastes like. But if, instead, your morning brew is usually instant coffee in a jar; it’s more likely that you’ll just feel embarrassed that you don’t know.

This is exactly the sort of thing I’m trying to overcome. I’m confident that lots of people who try my Nicaragua Peralta Estates Anaerobic Natural will think it’s great, but only if they ACTUALLY try it. And more importantly if that’s the sort of thing they enjoy.

I often tell the story of flavour preference, and how we don’t always cater to that preference in our offerings. My Dad, for example, loves well done steak, best bitter, dark tannic red wines and smoky, Islay malt whiskies. His toast has to be almost entirely black before he acknowledges it as toast, if he eats chocolate (he rarely does) he prefers it to be dark chocolate, and he loves a grapefruit in the morning.

All these foods have a high bitterness index, so when I feed him light, bright, sweet, fruity coffees he smiles politely and doesn’t enjoy them. I reckon he’d LOVE Mjölnir though.

I’m the opposite. I have a really sweet tooth. I like my whisky from a sherry cask, I like my toast perfectly golden all over and I would rather have a donut than a grapefruit first thing in the morning. That said, I also like acidity - I prefer raspberries to strawberries because they’re a bit more interesting, and when I get bitterness right, I love it - a hoppy IPA for example, or a Gin & Tonic.

When picking a coffee, you’re often bombarded with information which might not mean a great deal to you. And tasting notes are a bit wild aren't they? Does this coffee REALLY taste like strawberries? Well, not really, no. It tastes of coffee, but it’s sweet, and fruity, with that sort of boozy quality that reminds me of strawberries when they’re super-ripe and out in the sun, and it might be helpful to describe the coffee that way to help you understand how it might taste in your kitchen.

Think about a chocolate orange (I do, often.)

Yes, it’s chocolate. Yes, it tastes of orange. If you had a slice of orange and a slice of chocolate orange, could you tell which one the chocolate orange was? Absolutely you could.

It’s the same with coffee. When I describe it as tasting like apple, and you put it next to a glass of apple juice, then it isn't going to convince you it isn’t coffee. It’s definitely still coffee. Hopefully though, it will remind you of apple - perhaps in the way it makes your mouth water.

This chart is designed so that you can look at two simple and obvious variables. Does it taste fruity? Does it taste like blackened toast? from there you can decide if you like things that are fruity and are like lightly cooked toast, or if you prefer things that are chocolatey and taste more like blackened toast. Then you can pick Kenya or Mjölnir (or anywhere inbetween if you like)

I’d love to know if that’s helpful or not!