Today, I took the boys to the ultimate 'foodie' coffee experience in Boquete and possibly the world- Maria Ruiz's coffee tasting extravaganza. Maria Ruiz is a very 'big cheese' in the coffee tasting world and we felt honored to spend a couple of hours with her sharing our enthusiasm for coffee.
We started at 7.45 am smelling coffee. We learned there are at least two ways to smell coffee, on the outside of the vessel and in the center. The outside of the cup allowing the nose to pick up the subtle lighter aromas.
We went on to taste the coffee three times. First, our way, then how the professional does it. This is a combination of kissing, sucking and almost gargling the coffee in the back then the front of the mouth. The back of the mouth brings out the deeper darker flavors and the front seems to detect the lighter brighter notes at least for me. We are not sure all humans are made the same so it is possible for people to experience this differently.
The experience culminated with our attempt to pair the coffees with different desserts, an apple strudel and a banana cake and then check our own judgements through tasting. Wow.......it makes a big difference what you eat with your coffee.
If all this was not enough we went home to Alex's creation of the day for lunch..............coffee encrusted beef filet. Well done Alex this really was delicious. We served it with a Syrah wine with earthy plum notes. Yum.
Maria has offered to give us some different coffee samples to try with this recipe to see if the type of coffee used affects the flavor of the beef and how. The beef in Panama is beautiful grass fed hormone free meat. I think the differences might be too subtle to detect........but looking forward to the experiment all the same.
We started at 7.45 am smelling coffee. We learned there are at least two ways to smell coffee, on the outside of the vessel and in the center. The outside of the cup allowing the nose to pick up the subtle lighter aromas.
We went on to taste the coffee three times. First, our way, then how the professional does it. This is a combination of kissing, sucking and almost gargling the coffee in the back then the front of the mouth. The back of the mouth brings out the deeper darker flavors and the front seems to detect the lighter brighter notes at least for me. We are not sure all humans are made the same so it is possible for people to experience this differently.
The experience culminated with our attempt to pair the coffees with different desserts, an apple strudel and a banana cake and then check our own judgements through tasting. Wow.......it makes a big difference what you eat with your coffee.
If all this was not enough we went home to Alex's creation of the day for lunch..............coffee encrusted beef filet. Well done Alex this really was delicious. We served it with a Syrah wine with earthy plum notes. Yum.
Maria has offered to give us some different coffee samples to try with this recipe to see if the type of coffee used affects the flavor of the beef and how. The beef in Panama is beautiful grass fed hormone free meat. I think the differences might be too subtle to detect........but looking forward to the experiment all the same.
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