Flavour Notes - Where do they come from?

If you've ever picked up one of our cartons or browsed the website you would've found yourself perusing a list of our flavour notes. You might find yourself reading things like "dark chocolate" or "red wine" or "hibiscus tea" or "sweet lemonade", which might leave you wondering if we're crazy or just what that means.

Before I go about telling you how we determine what our flavour notes are , I think it's important that we establish what they are not. These flavours are not derived from anything added to our coffee, they are simply an example of how incredible coffee can be! They are the product of a careful selection of green coffee, from specific regions, through trustworthy partners. This carefully selected green coffee is then expertly roasted on our Loring by one of the best roasters in SA, and then we take it to a process called cupping - a method by which we assess quality, and you guessed it - flavour notes!

This cupping process is a way of brewing coffee with minimum interference from brew methods - that is, no filter papers, no pressure, just coffee immersed in hot water. It is in essence, a steeped brew, and what this allows us to do is taste our coffee in it's least altered form.

Our flavours notes that we choose to use on our cartons or website are then derived during this tasting process. We taste our coffee over the course of about 12 minutes from warm to cool and select the flavours that we feel are the most prominent and easy to identify. Those 3-4 flavours are the ones that end up being displayed.

Does this mean you'll taste every single flavour note in every single brew? No it doesn't! What it does mean is that these notes are guide to the possible flavours you may taste. For example, your delicate flavour notes like florals or fruits on a coffee might be more easily identifiable in filter brews, whilst your bolder flavour notes like chocolates or nuts might be more identifiable in espresso style brews.

All in all, our flavour notes are meant to be guide to help you determine what you taste and to get you excited about what those possibilities may be!

Happy brewing!