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Cervantes Coffee Tasting

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Back again after a bit of a delay.   For Valentine’s Day, I got a gooseneck kettle with a built-in thermometer, finally allowing me to get some proper use out of my pour-over equipment and using a better water temperature in my French press. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was going to taste the Cervantes coffee I received after my visit to their roasting facility and café a few weeks ago using three different brewing methods: pour-over, French press, automatic drip coffee maker. Having most* of the proper equipment now, I was able to do this over the weekend and Monday morning. Maybe I should preface this as well by saying these are not super in-depth reviews at this point…I’m just not that sophisticated yet. These are more reviews for normal people, following a normal routine. As I progress, I imagine they will get better and more detailed, but that is going to involve some learning (i.e., cupping/tasting classes).   So don’t expect a lot of tasting notes to start off wi
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Cervantes Coffee

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My wife surprised me yesterday with an early Valentine's Day present and a trip to Cervantes Coffee in Springfield.  It is an out of the way café and roastery, that doesn't look like much from the outside, but is pretty nice once you step inside. They are an artisanal, small batch roaster, that focus on single origin coffees. We took a tour with one of the owners (Alex), who gave us a nice overview of their company and how they got started. He also gave a nice talk about sustainable coffee and their interactions with farms where they purchase coffee.  After the brief presentation, we went downstairs to their sample roaster.  Here they pulled out some green coffee from Honduras and fired up the small (2lb) roaster.  He talked us through the roasting process and some of the tasting notes, which ended with everyone on the tour taking home an 8oz bag of freshly roasted coffee.  After Alex was done talking and we were just milling around, his wife came over (she is one of the p
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Hello!

Hi! So this is my new coffee blog. I will be working on adding some content and providing additional details in the coming days and weeks, but I will give you a brief intro right now. I am starting this blog with the intention of reviewing coffee and coffee related things (recipes for example) in the DC metro area. I plan on going to local coffee shops and writing reviews on the coffee I purchase.  I will let you know right now that I don't have any training in coffee tasting (like cupping), but I hope to learn this at some point, and the way I see it most people just want to know if coffee at a certain café tastes good or not. So that is what I will try to do. Also, I am a home coffee roaster, so I will let people know what I am roasting and how I am doing it, with a review at the end. That is all for now! More to follow. Paul
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