We continue to explore Cherry Love Coffee’s November box set, a collection of four canephora coffees.
BY TANYA NANETTI
SENIOR ONLINE CORRESPONDENT
Photos by Tanya Nanetti
Last week, we introduced Cherry Love, a coffee subscription service based in the Netherlands, and their November box set: a collection of four different canephora coffees. Today, I’m unpacking the box set and trying the coffees for myself.
Once my subscription was delivered, it was time to unpack it and start playing with it. Opening the outer box, which is pink, felt like opening a magic chest that was filled to the brim with treasures. Inside the box, there are four bags of coffee (labeled from “A” to “D,” with no other information available) and lots of cute stickers, a sealed envelope marked “Top Secret,” and an attractively designed notebook, the “Activity Guide,” which, as Carly Green, the creator of the coffee box, pointed out in our earlier conversation, would be my faithful companion throughout the tasting experience.
The Test Drive
I suppose it would make sense to read the activity notebook first, but I’m eager to try the coffees, so I start playing right away. A quick reading of the guidebook suggests that I approach the brewing with my AeroPress using a different set of parameters than I usually use with my regular arabica beans: a higher dose (15g of coffee per 200g of water) and a longer brew time (three minutes).
I pick a bag at random and start my brewing routine. Once the coffee is ready, I take the time to slowly go through the guide. First, a brief introduction explains the difference between canephora (the species) and robusta (its best-known variety). This is followed by brief interviews with Mikolaj Pociecha, Lukas Harbig, and Dr. Fabiana Carvalho—key figures in canephora research—who discuss many little-known facts about the world of canephora, from its history to what to expect from tasting notes. The guide then moves on to the coffee tasting activities.
There is a QR code you can scan to learn more about how to cup coffee at home, along with some tips on what to look for while tasting coffee, and four cupping cards (one for each coffee) on which you can record everything you discover. The guide also includes a couple of tasting challenges. For example, one requires the taster to guess which two of the coffees are robusta and which ones are not, and determine each coffee’s origin country.
Following the guide, I am now instructed to open the small envelope. Inside, I find written notes about each coffee, including origins, terroir information, tasting notes, and more, but without revealing which coffee corresponds to each specific bag. In this way, the tasting game can continue for at least one more round, re-tasting all the coffees to try to match each one, and comparing your tasting notes with those you recorded for the other coffees.
Over the next few days, my partner and I continue to taste all the different coffees, and by the end of the week, we have a clearer idea of what each coffee is: It’s finally time to open the Top Secret envelope and find out if our guesses were right.
I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I can say that the Indonesian coffee emerged as my favorite (not a huge surprise because I tend to really like Indonesian coffees), and we were able to associate all the coffees with their origin, thanks to the perfectly detailed explanations included in the activity guide.
We finished the coffees over the next few days, occasionally returning to the activity book to check out all the extra content available via QR codes, still amazed at how much fun we were having with the box and how much we were learning by playing with and brewing Cherry Love Coffee.
Looking Forward to December
Now, all I can do is wait for the December box to arrive, which Carly says will be Christmas-themed. “Next month’s box,” she says, “will be all about honey processing, featuring four Red Catuai coffees from Costa Rica. These coffees highlight different nuances of the honey processing, and your challenge is to see if you can identify them in a blind tasting.
“Our guest educator, Ricardo Ureña Rojas, is a Costa Rican coffee producer who has produced two of the four coffees in the box, and he will guide you through the myths and techniques behind the honey-making process,” she continues. “The coffees are roasted by Koppi, Kawa, Black Coffee, and Clever Coffee, and will be a perfect vacation activity or gift for your favorite curious coffee lover.”
That is indeed something to look forward to!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tanya Nanetti (she/her) is a specialty-coffee barista, a traveler, and a dreamer. When she’s not behind the coffee machine (or visiting some hidden corner of the world), she’s busy writing for Coffee Insurrection, a website about specialty coffee that she’s creating along with her boyfriend.
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