Asda Extra Special Ethiopian Mocha Limu

I like a smooth, pleasant mouthful of flavoursome coffee which also has subtle notes for me to pick up as I drink. This has that. Great drinkability - it hits the mouth straight away with melting chocolate, with enough roast notes to balance the smooth sweetness. And then the notes of honey, almonds, rose-hips, violets, lemon cupcakes, come through. Each sip providing new notes to explore. Wonderful!

Tasting notes
* A little watery though with pleasant buttery notes, gentle, lingering and developing coffee flavours. Quite subtle and attractive. An easy drinkable and pleasant coffee. Not assertive, not over-balanced, just pleasant and gently flavoursome
* Initially weak, watery, and fruity, with a mildly acidic character, this gradually emerged as a buttery and reasonably pleasant drink. Lacked character, but was inoffensive and pleasantly drinkable. Became a contender as the butter notes emerged.
*Rounded and smooth with gentle chocolate notes and a creamy mouthfeel. very pleasant.
*Some soft apricot fruit balanced with dots of milk chocolate.

The coffee beans come from the Limu region of Ethiopia, one of the areas identified as producing beans of quality. The Mocha name was originally applied to beans shipped through the Yemen port of Mocha, which often included beans from Ethiopia; it can now also apply to certain beans. The coffee costs £2.50 for 227g (£1.10 per 100g).

This is currently my favourite Ethiopian coffee.

Score: 8/10

Other reviews
*The Guardian  (7/10)

Asda tea and coffee

Ethiopian coffee

Twinings Fresh & Fruity Cranberry, Raspberry, & Elderflower

Delicate and refreshing fruit tea by Twinings. The flavours meld together delightfully, and the colour is a sparkling cranberry red. The elderflower makes itself noticed in the aroma. On drinking there is a pleasant sweetness, informed by fruit flavours and a light acidity. This is a very fine blend of ingredients, which curiously doesn't involve cranberries. The main ingredient is hibiscus, which makes a popular herbal tea in the Middle East and West Indies - that would provide both the colour and the tartness and cranberry flavour; the next ingredient is dried apple, which would provide the balancing sweetness; then rose hips, which also make a pleasant tea by themselves. There is a pleasant base note of licorice, which lingers after the higher fruit notes have evaporated, and this is provided by a small amount of licorice root.

Twinings Fresh & Fruity
Cranberry, Raspberry & Elderflower
Friday, 15 November 2013

Twinings

Taylors Guatemala Cloud Forests

A full bodied and well flavoured coffee. Good balance between deep roasted coffee notes and flowery, lemony citric notes, with pleasant caramel and honey notes in between. There's not much of a range of flavours beyond that, and there's nothing especially interesting or distinctive going on; this is simple, everyday coffee - and that's what is needed most days. Easy drinking, nice flavours, very pleasant all round.

I like that Taylors are doing FairTrade. I've always enjoyed Taylors for their drinkability - decent, flavoursome coffees - nothing high brow, but good quality everyday drinking. I've not looked at their packs for some years because I had them down as being a non-FairTrade company. So when I saw this, I snapped it up - a regional FairTrade coffee, at a decent price, from a company I know will make a drinkable blend.

Cloud forests are good locations for coffee production - the altitude and moisture produces decent levels of acidity. Traditionally coffee is grown within the forests which provide shade for the coffee plants, though some large coffee companies clear away the forests in order to maximise production and profit.

Rating: 5

Taylors of Harrogate

Guatemala coffee