Coffee

Long, long time ago…

I’ve been drinking coffee almost every day for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember the exact reason, maybe copying my parents because they’re also avid coffee drinker?

When starting out, I drank the same coffee like my parents. One of those commercial and cheap grounded coffee. I didn’t pay that much attention to the ingredients until later on. Turns out what I’ve been drinking are not 100% coffee! It contains a bunch of things I did not expect to be in a coffee, like corn starch.

At some point I started buying real grounded coffee from local shop. I thought I don’t care the coffee type as long as it can be brewed into black water. After years of trying different coffee, maybe I can actually tell the difference and have some preference?

And because there are so many of coffee variations, I need a way to avoid the bad ones and keep tab on my favorites.

And now, here we are with a list of coffee I’ve tried and barely remember the tastes.

Every grounded coffee I’ve ever bought (or barely remember)

Brand/Shop	Variant	Taste	Comment
Excelso	Arabica Gold	😐	-
Excelso	Brazilian Santos	😏	It has that unique burnt coffee taste
Excelso	Kalosi Toraja	😐	-
Excelso	Robusta Gold	😐	-
Kopi Boutique	Arabica Toraja Sulotco Sulawesi	😐	-
Kopi Boutique	Robusta Java Dampit	😐	-
Macehat	Arabica Sumatra Mandheling	🤔	Not a good latte material for me
Northsider	Aceh Gayo Wine	🤢	Well it kinda look like wine, but the taste, ugh I can’t bear it, sorry
Northsider	Arabica Flores Bajawa Fully-washed	😐	-
Northsider	Arabica Gunung Halu Banana Honey	😐	-
Northsider	Arabica Ijen Blue Mountain Honey	😐	-
Northsider	Arabica Java Malabar Red Honey	😐	-
Northsider	Arabica Toraja Bittuang Natural	😐	-
Northsider	Black Onyx blend (Robusta Java, Arabica West Java & Aceh)	😐	-
Northsider	Classic blend (Robusta Dampit, Arabica Flores)	😀	Starting tad bland, but feels strong later on, not bad!
Northsider	Cold White blend (Robusta Temanggung, Arabica West Java & Gayo)	😐	-
Northsider	North blend (All Arabica: Columbia, Brazil, Ethiopia)	😐	Feels weird at first, but it tastes just okay after a while.
Northsider	Razeta'55 blend (Arabica Brazil, Arabica Gayo, Robusta Temanggung)	❤️	I’ve been buying this blend for more than a year straight, probably my favorite blend so far.
Northsider	Sweet Gayo blend (Arabica Gayo, Robusta Temanggung)	😊	Just like the name suggests, it smells sweet. With milk, not so much, but I still like it.
Sido Mulia	Sido Mulia Premium (Robusta Dampit is my assumption)	😐	Meh, tastes like your usual bitter bland coffee. Not worth the premium price from this brand.

I can barely remember the taste for some of the coffee in the list, some are too acidic, some has that floral smell, but I lost those notes. So some of the taste and comments is kinda outdated until I bought them again for curiosity.

How did you make the coffee?

It’s almost always pour over grounded coffee using paper filter. I’ve been using the same Hario V60 dripper for years.

For the coffee, I use around 16g coffee for 3 servings. Then grab whatever milk from the fridge, usually it’s plain but it could be some low-fat mochachino. Pour the milk to the mug first. Then pour the coffee, done!

A warm coffee with milk, calms my mind 👌

(Maybe one day I’ll upgrade my kit and include practicing making latte art 🤔)

How “fresh” is the roasted beans?

I’ve read/heard from people that using fresher roasted beans gives better coffee tastes. Honestly, I can’t tell the differences. As long as the coffee powder is still good, no mold etc., I have no complaints.

For example, these coffee from Northsider, I bought them at 24 October. And from the packaging, it says production date is 17 October. Assuming it’s the roasting date, hey it only took 7 days from coffee beans to ready to use coffee powder. Fresh and enough for me. Heck, it’s way fresher than the coffee being enjoyed by these cool people in Antarctica. One of their coffee is 3 years old!