Last year two of my friends got me a gift card for the
Montreal Coffee Academy for my birthday and it was one of my favourite gifts ever!! I had a few different classes to choose from, but I ultimately landed on the
Coffee Tasting History and Terroir class.
This ended up being a semi-private class of 2 hours that covered everything from the history of coffee from seed to cup to demystifying coffee labels. I learned so much about coffee's history (Did you known Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee or that Yemen was the first country that coffee was commercially grown in back in the 1400s / 1500s?). It as also interesting to hear about the roasting process. There are three different ways to roast coffee: the natural or dry process, the washed process or the semi-washed process and each will results in a very different tasting bean.
We ended the class with a tasting of coffees via "cupping" and learning to read coffee labels. I learned that although I like the love the smell of fruity coffee, I prefer the taste of a nutty coffee since it's got less acidity! It's also great to know what to look for in labels now when I'm shopping for a bag of coffee beans (ie the region, the farm, and the roast dates). Often we'll read a label that will tell us the notes of the coffee like cherry, chocolate or champagne but it's key not to pay too much attention to that since everybody interprets notes differently!
The Montreal Coffee Academy offers all sorts of classes form latté art and espresso theory to intensive barista training. I loved the class I took and I think it's helped me appreciate my morning coffee even more! Thanks ladies for the best gift ever!
