Cupping Room Sidra
- Country: Colombia
- Region: Cundinamarca, Zipacon, La Palma Y El Tucan
- Altitude: 1600m
- Variety: Sidra
- Method: Natural
- Flavour Notes: Red grape, raspberry & honey lemon candy
- Grind Settings & Brew Ratio: 20.0i/0.9@800rpm/45o/26s
- Roaster: Cupping Room
And just like that, like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, I discovered the most epic supplier of competition coffees.
Today’s coffee is roasted by Cupping Room, founded in 2011 and based in Hong Kong. You take one look at their web-shop and you basically want to order everything (which is exactly what I did a few months later, PostNL had other ideas though and never delivered it). Moreover Cupping Room is one of the few roasters I’ve found that has a monthly subscription for experimental coffees, it’s called ICONs. Along with Slurp & Colonna I added ICONs to my subscription line-up (fortunately before the end of 2020 after which they increased the grams sent, but honoured existing subscription prices).
The coffee was the first and only Sidra I have tried. The honey base with grape flavours came out very clean, both as espresso & pour over. The best way I can think to describe it was like a high quality Scotch Whisky, that smooth blended viscosity of a simple flavour profile. There is really no need with such a smooth rich coffee to taste 10 different things. I kept the beans in the freezer for around 9 months, pulling about 1 shot per month without seeing any degradation in extraction or flavour.
To celebrate this coffee, I decided to brew the last 20g in front of my fishtank.
The packaging is gorgeous, I love botanical prints so this one holds a special place in my red book.