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coffee tasting with large group of friends
jedovaty
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Posted on 03/11/2012 12:23 PM
Hi:

I have tried searching briefly here, considerably on google, but can't find anything very helpful. I am looking for advice on how to taste coffee with about half a dozen friends. I would have two or three coffees from the local roaster, starbucks, and two-three of my own beans roasted to two different levels each. So that's quite a bit of coffee.

The biggest issue is how to brew so much coffee at once?
- cupping would be right, because:
-- you just need to grind the coffee, and have a bunch of boiling pots of water and friends can bring kettles to help out with.
but it has issues:
--- 6 friends and a dozen coffees makes for 72 cups/bowls... that's a lot of cups holy cow what do I do with it afterwards?! (by the way, I found nice $1.50 8oz bowls at C&B which would be perfect, but spending that much for stuff I won't use at least a year later... seems excessive and wasteful).
--- Plastic/Paper cups?
--- is sharing bowls "okay" ? Kind of grosses me out, even though we are just sipping and dipping spoons.. err... yuck
--- after describing the process to my peeps, they have problems with either the grinds in their mouths or the spitting
--- most haven't tasted coffee this way, and I feel it would be better to do in a way they are more familiar with to have a reference

French press may be possible as well, but buying 12 french presses at $20 a piece seems waaaay too excessive.

Oh - wait - the local sur-la-tab has these plastic #4 pour-over cones frombelguim for $2.50 a piece. My gf uses one of these with a swiss gold, but I could buy a dozen and use paper filters.

But if I get past the brewing part, still left with the issue of serving the coffee in such a way they can be tasted together at the same time.

hmmm... help? Maybe this is too large a project and I should narrow it down. The idea is to taste them all side-by-side, and I'd want to do it blind to remove all bias. Something for fun on a late saturday morning smile
 
ginny
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Posted on 03/11/2012 2:30 PM
http://www.sweetm...ition.html

this is reported to be a great book.

-g
 
ginny
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Posted on 03/11/2012 2:34 PM
http://coffeegeek...nercupping

side right, second panel give you the index for reading this paper.

-g
 
jedovaty
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Posted on 03/11/2012 5:46 PM
Thank you for your input! Sorry I wasn't clear, cupping is a no go because the friends are very, very averse to grinds and spitting. And personally, I'm against sharing cups, it grosses me out.

I think this is too ambitious a project. Well, it's on hold for now, anyway.
 
jkoll42
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Posted on 03/11/2012 7:40 PM
Why not simplify? Do one *$'s, two very different coffee's of your own roast and one professional roast. That would get you your nasty coffee (to make yours taste amazing smile ), professional and a range of your own.

I agree that you should probably brew in a conventional method so there is no sharing of cups (nasty!) or grounds in teeth etc. Could you swing 4 french presses? 6 cups? Pour the water in the presses 1 min apart (or whatever) and cup each brew one after the other. You can just rinse the cup out between brews.

I say go for the fun and don't worry about getting super elaborate. If everyone enjoys it, you can do it again with the same presses and this time do 4 of your own coffees since everyone will remember the nasty *$'s!

Jon
-Jon
Honey badger 1k, Bunn LPG-2E, Technivorm, Cimbali Max Hybrid, Vibiemme Double Domo V3
 
JimH
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Posted on 03/11/2012 7:47 PM
Check your area for a party rental supplier. They will be happy to rent you as many cups as you could want, you can usually even return them dirty.

As far as brewing goes, I think the #4 cones are probably a pretty good idea. You might start to feel like a one-armed paperhanger trying to pour them all at once though, help will almost undoubtedly be necessary. You can probably rent carafes when you get the cups.
 
jedovaty
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Posted on 03/12/2012 9:34 AM
Thanks for the ideas. Reducing the number of beans will help, and if the party supply places are too expensive, I can just ask friends to bring their own mugs. Or look into paper cups -- not ideal, but it'll do the trick. Perfect, thanks again for the input.
 
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