#AddFeelingsNotSugar – Why should you enjoy your coffee sugar free?
04/08/2020
It’s not the first time when you step into our coffee shops and our barista tells you that you should give our coffee a chance without adding sugar. At first, it’s kind of frustrating and you might feel that we don’t care about your taste. In the end, it’s you paying for that coffee. And just because we care, we want you to get what you paid for: an excellent cup of coffee perfectly extracted from the best beans.
Let’s talk about our #AddFeelingsNotSugar recommendation so you can understand where your coffee comes from and why it’s so important to explore specialty coffee more than ever. We are part of the third wave coffee movement, which is considered artisanal food – just like wine.
This movement called also specialty coffee is led by consumers, farmers, traders, roasters, baristas which appreciate high-quality coffee beans. Our coffee experience it’s enhanced by education and testing, it’s just like a sensory exploration beyond the cup of coffee.
What’s special about this movement? It’s all about the quality of the beans, the unique flavors, the relationship between the farmer and the roasters, the balance between the quality you get, and the fair price you pay.
At Meron, we constantly seek to highlight the individual characteristics from the beans we get from farmers around the world, the processing, the roasting methods, and the variables in beverage preparation. So, let’s see what’s all about, before explaining why it’s better to not add sugar to your coffee. One step at a time…
Farmers
Every coffee that reaches our roastery is a single origin, single estate, or single farm. Single-origin means that the coffee is sourced from one farm, mill, or co-operative. More than that, you can find on the coffee labels the estate name, the specific lot, or the specific varietal from a specific farm, if it’s a micro or nano lot. One of the most important aspects of single-origin coffee is traceability or the fact that you know exactly where your coffee comes from and also that it’s a specific coffee origin, not a blend. You get to know your coffee better, you will understand a coffee profile and you also know how the environment (the soil it was planted in, the use of organic or not fertilizers, the amount of shade, the elevation, the processing method & more) affected what’s in your cup.
Francisco Morales – Finca La Esperanza
Roasters
Specialty coffee is the result of rain and sun, a chosen eco-system to grow the best beans – it’s both science and art, it takes months and it takes hard work. Harvested at full ripe by hand, sorted, processed, and shipped to coffee lovers from around the world. Here, in our roastery from Transylvania, we explore tasting notes, constantly adapt the roasting profile of the beans, and know the whole coffee route from cherries to green beans to coffee-based beverages.
Keep in mind: “For each and every coffee origin that enters in our roastery we develop a roasting profile.”
Our Head Roaster emphasizes the best flavors in those beans. With controlled origin, grown in small batches and with traceability from the first to the last link, we are looking for coffee beans all over the world. Thus, with chocolate, floral, fruity or spicy tasting notes, our customers experience a journey of the senses in countries like Rwanda, Ethiopia, Brazil, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, and the list is updated from one month to another.
Barista
Every barista from Meron grows and develops his skills constantly through training, testing and practice. Our team of trainers makes sure that our people know and understand coffee enough to pass this passion on to our customers. We invest a lot in their knowledge, we organize weekly seminars, cupping sessions, testing, and level exams. And that’s not an easy task. You have to work clean, to be respectful – to you, the coffee and the customer. From a correctly extracted espresso to latte art or an elaborate brew, they know all the methods to make your day better.
“What you receive in a cup is the result of months of training, tasting & sometimes failing. Until he or she succeeds.”
In the end, their job is to serve the customer the best coffee they can – and if you chose to add sugar in that cup, it means that in all the process, from farm to cup, something failed. The clarity of the tasting notes, the flavors, the balance of the coffee cup – are all given by the hard work of all the people involved in the process.
Equipment
It is true. We are truly geeks when it comes to equipment. We buy only top equipment, from espresso machines to grinders or brew equipment – you will find them in our coffee shops and in our roastery.
Why? In the specialty coffee industry, every chain of the supply aims to bring out the best notes & flavors in the bean. And even if it’s all made with passion, you got to have science and technology on your side. From our Probat 25 (which, btw, we had soon welcomed in our home) to La Marzocco or Victoria Arduino grinders, we work with top equipment and we will keep doing that.
Customer
We are more than proud to have contributed to the development of this industry, here and beyond borders. We are grateful that people chose to drink our coffee and they share with us the sensorial experiences that they had when meeting our coffee.
So you, the one that does not add sugar in our coffee, *heads-up*, we thank you! You, the one that adds sugar in the cup, give our coffee a chance and taste it before adding sugar in it. Sugar drowns out some of the delicate notes, it changes the flavor, it affects the quality of the product and it can ruin your experience.
Sugar, cream, caramel and syrups of each kind steal away your experience. It’s not that we do not want to offer you sugar – you can find plenty in our locations – it’s that we encourage you to enjoy the coffee at its best: sugar free.
Signed,
The coffee lovers that cherish, analyze, judge every cup of coffee and aim to make it better. Each and every time.