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Expert tips for pairing and tasting coffee at home

Expert tips for pairing and tasting coffee at home

At-home gourmands are bringing fine dining experiences into their homes with parties revolving around tasting and pairing cheeses, wines, chocolates and other fine foods. But have you ever thought about leading a coffee pairing adventure?

Coffees not only feature complex flavours and tasting notes, but pair wonderfully with many dishes you’re likely already serving up and are an ideal way to finish your meal. Take your next dinner party up a notch (and wow your guests) by leading a coffee tasting experience at the end of your feast.

We asked Nespresso-trained Coffee Sommelier™ Elyse Lambert – named Best Sommelier of the Americas in 2009 and representative for Canada at the Best Sommelier of the World Competition in April of 2010 in Chile – for her tips on serving up the perfect cuppa pairing at home. Here’s what she had to say:

1. Get quality ingredients and the right tools

Make sure you have the right coffee and quality ingredients. Whether it is top coffee beans or a great wine or aged spirits, it is not worth trying to pair ingredients if your ingredients don’t taste great on their own. Paring will help unlock flavours, but won’t make something bad better. You have to know exactly which ingredients you want ahead of time. The right tools also help you taste coffee better. I suggest a ceramic cup and not paper or glass. And you need a good spoon that can hold a little bit of quantity, round, but not too big.

2. Ensure consistency

The most important thing in any type of pairing, no matter what you are trying, is to maintain consistency among the ingredients you are working with. This is what first drew me to Nespresso. When I was trying to make coffee in a traditional machine, there were so many different factors from water temperature, to pressure, to beans - which made the pairings difficult to replicate. Nespresso has standardized the perfect cup of coffee every time with quality beans.

3. Pair with what makes sense to you

As a sommelier, I am most interested in pairing coffee at the end of the meal, when it traditionally comes out, along with dessert and spirits. While I appreciate chefs that are experimenting with coffee as an ingredient mixed with savoury food (I recently tried a delicious coffee and fois gras dish), I personally approach it as a complement to an overall dining experience. So I started experimenting with the roasting of the coffee and certain spirits aged in oak like Cognac, Calvados, Bourbon and Brandy. I also love the mix of coffee and chocolate, and this is where I play with various percentages of cocoa, from 50% all the way to 85%. The smallest percentage can make a significant difference. And just to clarify, when we say pair we mean tasting them at the same time, like you would at a meal. It is not about mixing coffee and alcohol in the same cup, but rather trying them one after the other, allowing the flavours and aromas to complement each other.

4. Learn to taste coffee

Coffee tasting is similar to wine tasting. It is visual, olfactory and gustatory, or, in other words, it is about sight, smell and taste.

- Look: Quality coffees are characterized by rich, generous hazelnut-coloured foam called crema. Crema is a naturally formed foam of coffee and air produced during the brewing process. Espresso lovers know that crema is the sign of ultimate coffee quality and enhances the tasting pleasure.

- Smell: Breathe in the aromas arising from your cup. At first you can notice light, floral and fruity scents. Stir the coffee and you will release heavier, roasted woody and spicy notes. The aromas of the roasted coffee hint at the flavor to follow in the spoon.

- Taste: Sip a generous amount of coffee so that the liquid coats your mouth, awakening your taste buds. With this technique, you will experience acidity or liveliness as when tasting a lemon; bitterness as when tasting cocoa; body (thickness of the beverage) in the mouth, and aromas in the nose. Since coffee is a liquid, you may be tempted not to keep it in your mouth but just swallow. I suggest sipping a little coffee through a spoon. As funny as it sounds, you need to aspirate it vigorously with a slurp – to create an affect that will bring out the flavour by mixing it with air.

5. Make sure you have fun

The most important thing is that you need to have fun. When I started coffee pairings, I felt like a kid because I got to experiment and buy lots of different ingredients. I took tons of pictures of ingredients, my machine and all my tools – it was like I was in a laboratory. Food is all about exploration, and this gives me a chance to be a 'Tastebud' scientist.

The world of taste is amazing. This is my passion, and I love sharing this passion with other people as well. You can make it complicated – but it doesn’t need to be. Do it because you love it. Some people love golf and spend all their time perfecting their swing. I love taste and experimenting with flavours. At the end of the day, coffee pairing should be simple, fun and delicious.