“The Great British Baking Show” hosts often talk about baked goods that are worth the calories. I think the same way about caffeine – whether it is in coffee or tea. As I mentioned earlier, coffee is one of my guilty pleasures. I have to limit myself to two cups of coffee every day and even that before 12 noon. So no surprise, I put an extreme premium on what I drink.
Today’s coffee was particularly amazing. I ordered Coffee Collective’s Los Rodriguez from my friends at The Coffee Movement, one of the finer coffee establishments in San Francisco. This is a Bolivian coffee and it is very different from my usual African coffees. This is a coffee that comes making a lot of noise and announces itself before you even open the package.
It has a velvety and chocolate-like smell. There is a hint of citrus. You open the package, and the scent intoxicates you — and I couldn’t help but brew a cup right away. The package said it has notes of strawberry, pear cider, and orange blossom. I didn’t get any of those — though there was a hint of citrus and the mellow chocolate-like flavor gives this a smooth and silky feeling. When it cools down a little, it is very genteel and gentlemanly, almost tea-like in texture and taste. It is nothing like that noise-making upstart.
I saw you get this before they run out of the beans — it is a very unique coffee and worth the caffeine. Of course, it is not cheap – $22 for 8.8 oz or about 250 grams. It works out to about $1.75 per cup of coffee. (A cup for me is roughly 20 grams of coffee per 275 ml of water and brewed for about 4 minutes at a temperature of 201 degrees Fahrenheit or 93.9C