For the love of coffee: Starbucks Coffee Appreciation Festival

Last April 2 and 3, Starbucks held a Coffee Appreciation Festival at the Grand Atrium, Main Wing of EDSA Shangri-La Plaza. I’m one #happycoffeegirl so there’s no way I’ll miss an event to appreciate coffee! :D :D

Good thing I went early on the first day, literally waited for the mall to open, because the line of the people who wanted to enter the festival got long fast. Nonetheless, coffee is always great with company.

We were given a map which served as our guide to the coffee exploration journey. The fest had four stations which the participants had to visit one by one. In each station, we had to collect one stamp from the coffee master to be able to proceed to the next. It was a lot of fun, I felt like Dora the Explorer (without the singing, thank goodness).

Our Starbucks coffee exploration journey started with “The Journey of the Bean” where awesome SB baristas explained a bit of history of coffee; the different kinds and attributes of coffee; how the plant is grown; where the coffee originate; and the processes that coffee undergoes such as drying and roasting, before it leads to our favorite Starbucks store. There were tarps with the history of coffee and there were also coffee plants and sacks of beans displayed.

Starbucks is very proud of its "100% Arabica bean coffee" which are grown all the way from Latin America. They prefer this kind because of its smooth texture and gorgeous flavor.

It’s a coffee festival so you got to expect a lot of drinking of course (but I absolutely didn’t mind, GIMMEE COFFEE!) but we just didn’t drink coffee, we got to make our own! SB baristas, who were the coffee masters, were really nice to show us two coffee techniques that they use when making our favorite cup. There was a demo for coffee press brewing and pour over brewing.

Using coffee press retains the precious oils that paper filters absorb, which keeps the coffee’s full flavor.

Let me share to you the four fundamentals of brewing Starbucks (any coffee in general) coffee!

Proportion – The recipe for great coffee is 2 tbsp ground coffee for every 180 mL of water. You may adjust by adding hot water but using less coffee will give you a bitter cup. 

Grind – The rule of thumb is, the finer the grind, the shorter the brew time. Another thing I learned, espresso grind is the finest, followed by brew, and then press is the coarse one.

Water – When brewing coffee, you want to use a one degree-less-from-boiling water. Heat the water to almost boiling in order to extract the coffee’s full range of flavors.

Freshness – The freshness of the coffee is very important to retain its flavor. So once you’ve opened the coffee bag, keep the coffee in an airtight container at room temperature. Keep it away from oxygen, light, heat and moisture.

We weren’t able to do the pour over brewing, unfortunately, because there were too many people in that station already… and we were really excited about the coffee tasting. MUST.GET.COFFEE!

We were really excited to do the coffee tasting… not just because we’ll get to have coffee but it’s actually our first time to experience “coffee tasting” … sounds so mature and classy and sophisticated (haha) like wine tasting, only we’re drinking coffee.

Anywayyy, on the first Coffee tasting station, we had Gladwyn as our coffee master. He was really nice. He had us taste Caffé Verona. It had a rather heavy bodied, bold, chocolatey flavor.

The coffee master also taught us the four steps of coffee tasting. (See, what’d I say…sophistication. Jk!)

Even Mico was pretty excited! :))

First and foremost, we smell the coffee before we taste it. Apparently our mouth can only distinguish limited tastes but our nose can detect thousands of smells. So before you take a sip of your coffee, don’t forget to take a sniff first!

When tasting coffee, it’s important to slurp it because this allows the coffee to spray across your entire palate and lets the subtle flavors and aromas reach all the tasting zones of your mouth. You might hesitate when you’re out with friends (or on your own) in your SB tambayan, but according to coffee master Gladwyn, in Starbucks, the louder the slurp, the better! Much like eating ramen I guess… so slurp your hearts out!

Next step is locate… think about the coffee’s weight and feel in your mouth. Yes, you gotta drink with your mind too. Light-bodied coffees feel light on the tongue and have a clean finish while full-bodied coffees feel heavier and have lingering flavors. Where are you experiencing the flavors on your tongue?

Finally, describe your coffee-tasting experience. How would you characterize the aroma, flavor and the feel of the coffee in your mouth? Sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle… (just like somebody you know LOL) Flavors can vary greatly between coffees – from citrus to cocoa to berry..

Isn’t coffee tasting fun? :)

So after tasting the coffee bare, Gladwyn made us taste it with milk chocolate and dark chocolate. You’d be surprised how the flavor developed with the chocolate. The bitterness of the coffee was balanced with the sweetness of the chocolate. The cocoa flavor of the coffee was further enhanced by the chocolate. Really good!

We also got to taste the Caffé Colombia from Latin America, where else? This was a bit lighter and had a sweeter flavor than Verona. It had a nutty flavor so the coffee master made us try it with different nuts. We tasted it with almond, walnut and the common peanut. The nut was able to even out the bitterness of Colombia (see what I did there :P). My favorite combo was Colombia and almond. Almond has this sweet flavor which I liked with the coffee. I do like my coffee bittersweet.

After some coffee tasting, we went to take a look at the all-in-one espresso machine demo. Only some SB stores have that machine of total awesomeness. I had to try it myself, of course! Before the do-it-yourself experience, there was supposedly a latté art talk on the side but I was too eager to try the espresso machine, I stayed beside it the whole time we’re in that station. HAHAHA

Yay! Did my own latté (with the help of this nice barista)! #Happycoffeegirl is happy though I wasn’t able to pull off the coffee art. Guess, I kinda missed a lot from not listening to the coffee art lessons. Oh well… still, free double shot latté for me!

Finally, we got to the final stop of our coffee exploration journey, at the Starbucks Reserve Station.

Have you visited any of the Starbucks Reserve shops in the metro? I’ve been in the Tomas Morato store. It’s nice and big, great for study outs and chill dates.

Other Starbucks Reserve stores are in Makati, Fort Bonifacio Global City and Ortigas.

Starbucks Reserve offer different exotic kinds of coffee using the pour over brewing method. We tried the coffee from the Panama Carmen Estate and Costa Rica La Candelilla during our visit.

Back at the Starbucks coffee festival, we got to try the Buenos Aires Nicaragua maracaturra. Its coffee beans were bigger than your usual coffee beans, hence its name—maracaturra. Honey, the coffee master explained the etymology but I’ll leave that to her (HAHA sorry). But basically, it just means bigger bean. 

Starbucks is proud to cater some of the rarest coffees in the world through Starbucks Reserve. According to Coffee Master Honey, the coffees they offer at Reserve are so rare because they only grow once in years.

And there you go, here’s one Certified Coffee Explorer! HOORAAYY!

Collecting the stamps on the map wasn’t just for the fun of it. After going through all Coffee Appreciation festival stations, we received an exclusive Coffee Explorer kit.

Besides the activities, there were also art exhibits made of coffee

We also got to buy coffee beans and brewing equipment with discount!

So the next time you visit Starbucks, skip the frappe and give their fresh brew a try! 

Copyright ©2016 by Mykha B. Tabuzo. The moral right of Mykha B. Tabuzo to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.