The Decaf Project: The World's Largest Coffee Tasting

15-12-2024

Today I had the good fortune to take part in what I believe is the second iteration of James Hoffmann's "World's Largest Coffee Tasting" event. The first happened in 2020 and I missed that - classic lack of willingness to show enthusiasm? Probably.
Anyway, the other thing which fun thing this weekend was the arrival of a new keyboard, the Keychron K2 HE which I was foolish/optimistic enough to back on Kickstarter some months ago. It finally arrived on Saturday and I must say it's by far the most pleasant keyboad I've ever owned. I appreciate that Keychron are one of relatively few well-regarded mechanical keyboard manufacturers who provide layouts other than ANSI.
So at least part of the reason I'm troubling myself to write this post is to give myself an excuse to use the keyboard extensively. For similar reasons I finally got around to writing a little bit of Python to correct a bunch of malformed file names which have been bothering me.

Keychron K2 HE keyboard

What was the tasting, anyway? James Hoffmann, if you don't know, is perhaps the foremost public figure involved in popularising 3rd wave coffee. I'm the last person who should be writing any sort of history of that movement, but he's the one who got me into brewing better coffee, and I'm far from alone in that! Other creators like Morgan Eckroth and Lance Hedrick to name just a couple have also been important, but James is My Guy.

The Decaf Project was a new publicity stunt intended to shine a light on the quality of modern decaf coffees, as well as a collection of participating roasters. You can read more about it at its own website (link) if you want, but for my writing purposes the idea was that samples of a carefully chosen lot of fine coffee was shipped to three different decaffeination companies, each of whom uses a different process:

Samples of each decaff, along with the original full-caff, were then sent to a variety of roasters around the world. You could then buy a kit from one of the roasters and receive a 50g back of each of the 4 expressions of this same coffee, and participate in a livestreamed tasting event! My thanks go out to The Coffee Apothecary in Aberdeen for my kit.

With great excitment this afternoon I set out a tray of ground coffees and prepared to taste!

Ground coffee

This is laid out for 'cupping', a technique used in the coffee industry for comparative tasting of different varieties/roasts. The idea is not to brew a really good cup of coffee, but to minimise the affect of human input and compare the coffess on their own merits.
You therefore grind your coffee to a medium coarseness and brew it with soft, off-boiling water at a ratio of 60g/L.
Or at least, that's the idea. I messed up and brewed 6g of each in 150ml of water, which is a ratio of 40g/L. No wonder I couldn't taste much. Still, I didn't realise this until later, so on we go!

Brewed coffee

There's the coffee as-brewed (with bonus background cat, Beans wanted to be involved). It's not the most appetising coffee preparation, sitting going cold with the grounds still in there. But the experience is more about comparing and experiencing the roasts than about producing a good cup of coffee.
I made some notes as I went and I've written them up here:

Coffee Aroma Acidity Sweetness Bitterness Vibe
Full Caff Chocolate, natural aroma in the grounds. Fruity when the crust was broken. Mild Definite sweetness, probably the most of the 4 Bitterness there, but not intrusive This made me think of sipping a cup of coffee in a café on a rainy day
Carbonic Natural CO2 process Tangy grounds, spicy scent on breaking the crust. Gentle acidity Less sweetness than some others A strangely pleasant bitterness in this one Something to drink after lunch, to fuel your afternoon
Ethyl Acetate process Spicy grounds, spiced pastry aroma on the break Pleasantly acidic Less sweetness than some others Prominent bitterness in this one Cereal bowl, like Shreddies
Swiss Water process Musty grounds, a certain plasticity on the break Not much acidity here Mild sweetness Minimal bitterness Vibrant, nutty, bananas

I think next time I do something like this, body and finish are things I need to pay more attention to. But the practice of doing it at all is good! Tastings are something I would like to make more time for. It was good to have a reason to use my cupping spoon! And I'm glad I've used my Sunday to engage in some interests, like coding, coffee, and this site. My thanks to James Hoffmann, Coffee Apothecary, and Keychron too!

I'll finish here with my hastily-scribbled original notes, lest I let meyself think the edited, processed versions above are a true reflection of what I'm capable of in the moment:

My hastily scribbled notes

This has been an exercise in personal growth though. It involved: