I’d heard of wine tasting, whiskey tasting and cheese tasting events but I’d never heard of a coffee tasting event so I was definitely intrigued. Can it be done? Of course, and the folks over at Taylor St Baristas did a really outstanding job at it this weekend. Organised by the folks over at Qype, a group of about ten people gathered at Taylor St Baristas’ Liverpool Street location fairly early on Saturday morning. Everyone seemed pretty upbeat considering no one had yet consumed their caffeine fix.

That was soon not going to be a problem with a selection of five roasts ready to be tasted in both their filtered and espresso forms. Before the tasting began the baristas gave us the quick low down on how to do the tasting introducing the different aspects of taste (sweet, salty, bitter, sour) combined with the aroma, flavour and mouth feel. It initially took us some time to note the different aspects that became slightly easier as we moved back and forth between the different coffees and having something to compare and contrast the different aspects.

As you can see from the picture above, we didn’t consume *all* of that coffee although maybe that explains my sleeplessness for the entire weekend. After all, they did recommend to spit, not swallow but some of them were just too good to have just a sip. Between the filtered and the espresso coffees we had a croissant to help absorb the big rush of caffeine and listened to the just-as-passionate roasters from Union Coffee talk about why they selected the coffees that they did. We heard the heart warming story about where the coffee beans came, and I certainly appreciated how the coffee industry has changed the lives for the coffee-growing communities for the better in an, everyone wins situation.

With the espressos rolling out at a ridiculously fast pace, we got plenty of opportunity to watch the skill that goes into making the perfect shot of coffee. The guys at Taylor St make it look particularly easy but I’m guessing that it’s much harder than it looks. The final coffee they introduced us to was a bit of a speciality, from what I remember, named the “Naked Espresso”. You can see it drip out into the cup below, producing an even creamier, richer brew sure to give you that satisfying hit.

I unfortunately can’t remember all the coffee blends (and my picture of the tasting board ended up too blurry) but I do remember thinking that the Rwandan Gashonga roast was definitely one of my favourites, with a rich chocolate malt base and, what I thought of, hints of cinnamon and cloves that reminded me slightly of Christmas time.

Thanks again to the people at Qype for organising such a great event, the people from Union providing such excellent quality coffee and the amazingly hospitable and down to earth guys from Taylor St Baristas (go have one of their coffees!)