Our New Blend: Carnival

We are very excited to announce our new blend: Carnival!

Carnival is a labour of love and has been inspired by the upcoming 2016, Rio Olympic and Paralympic games. With carnival we wanted to create a coffee that we believed summed up the Olympics games as well as Brazil. A coffee that could transport you to this exotic faraway land and at the same time give you the bitter sweet tastes and excitement of the Olympic Games.

First of all we knew that we had to capture the spirit and soul of the Olympic Games as well as Brazil. Straight away we started thinking of the samba the street festivals and carnivals that are so famous in Brazil. The excitement, energy and anticipation that we associate with the Olympic Games. We knew that we had to have something in this coffee that was going to stand out, that was going to be proud, something that was a bit special and was going to give us that energy and vibrancy we were looking for.

We started our search by cupping various coffees from different origins to see what coffees we felt best represented these attributes. Pretty soon we had narrowed down our search to one area, east Africa. The east African coffees, especially Kenyan and Ethiopian are famous for their vibrancy and stand out qualities, which represent exactly what we were looking for.

At this point we started cupping just Kenyan and Ethiopian coffees to see if we could find the exact coffee we wanted. After much debate, and coffee drinking we decided that the Ethiopian Dijimmah best represent what we were looking for.

Once we had our energy and proud stand out flavour we needed to find something to balance the coffee so that it was not too over powering. This works in the same way that going to a street festival and samba party all day everyday may eventually become a bit too overpowering for most people. For this coffee we wanted something that was going to give us a good body and a nice balance to the coffee. A coffee that, like the coaches, staff and volunteers at the Olympics is quite prepared to do a lot of the hard work and let others shine. Again it was time to get back to the cupping table and start tasting coffees.

It was during this cupping that we had our eureka moment. We realised that Brazilian coffee was famous for doing exactly what we needed. Not only would the Brazilian balance our drink and give it a great body, but it ties in perfectly with everything the blend is about. We cupped all the Brazilians we could get our hands on and found that the Brazilian Santos did exactly what we needed.

At this point we had our ingredients but we still had to work out the right amounts of each to put into our blend. After much more experimenting, cupping, coffee drinking and getting as many people as we could to try our different blend make ups, we decided on a 70% Brazilian and 30% Ethiopian Blend.

We are very pleased with the result of our carnival blend and we honestly believe we have really captured the essence of Brazil and the Olympics, as well as creating something that truly tastes great.

All that is left to say is that we hope you have as much fun drinking Carnival as we have had making it.