Had a good time this arvo at campos in the valley. I had no idea really what to expect but I figured on at least 10 people. Well, there were 4 of us, 3 of which were crema members, Kelsey, Brett H and myself. We were ushered into a room with a cool roaster, comfy chairs and aprons. Then we were moved from that room to the " cupping room", only after the secret squirrel knock and compulsory look through the peep hole had satisfied the cupping master of our validity ( we were now wearing the campos aprons
) 6 cups awaited each contestant..err cupee and these had the specified amount of ground coffee in each with the whole beans for each cup lined up on the table in order. After a brief chat about the whys and hows, we had a good whiff of the products. There was columbian, ethiopian, indian MM, png, guatemala COE and the 6th was a typical bean used by chains like GJ's or Maccas that remained nameless. Stewart went around and filled all the cups with 92degree ( I think) water and set the timer for 5 minutes. We then broke the crusts and coated the back of a spoon with each sample and whiffed again. Stewart then returned and scooped the crusty bits off the surface and it was tasting time. A Tiny puddle in the spoon needed to be drawn into the mouth with as much air as possible in order to get the desired effect. It sounded like a cocaine convention for a while. The nameless bean was truly horrible. The master described it as like licking tarmac, Brett H and Kelsey agreed on something mixed with ashtray while I said it tasted like feet. It was so rank that everyone dipped into anything else to get rid of the taste. The standout was the indian MM. I found it quite subtle on the sip but the taste soon grew to overpowering and continued to develop even after many attempts to quench it with something else. Apparently its a different animal with milk. We shall see. Freebee coffee was given out at the end. I chose the MM to see how it goes with milk. I also grabbed .5 kg of obama. Kelsey and Brett H were off to merlo for a brew while I had to go up the road to belissimo to get some beans before hiking back to the car. All in all good fun, learnt a lot but my palette is rubbish. Brett H managed to pick green apple in one of them ! WTF man, I wasn't even in the orchard.
