Samsung make Coffee

Did you know that Samsung the Electronics Company make coffee? Well technically they don’t themselves, but they are in partnership with Origin Coffee and last weekend we attended a Coffee Workshop at the Samsung Building in King’s Cross (London).

Here’s what we learnt…

The Samsung building in the new complex behind King’s Cross and St. Pancras is a pleasant place, built out of the old Dingwall’s Building, where once raves and all nighter club took place, it is now a mass of more sophisticated High St stores, restaurants and showrooms for the TV’s etc and at the side of the massive screen is a coffee shop.

It was here that we joined a small group and listened to a woman talk about coffee and in particular the differences and the processes of using an Aorepress and a Cannula Pour Over to brew the drinks.

First up she explained a few brewing processes and the differences between coffee from around the world. Did you know South American coffee is more nutty and chocolatey and African Coffee Beans hold a more fruity flavour? No, nor did we, but we all do now! She started off using the African beans and using the AeroPress, we watched as she brewed the coffee, measuring out the beans and the water to exact measures, not something we think we will ever do, but the result after a few minutes was noticeably fruity, even when black and unsweetened!

Next was the Pour Over method and the results were different, it had more texture, it still tasted fruity, but less so, it was weird.

So then she got one of the other people watching to try making the coffee with a Aeropress and we watched the whole process once more, this time with the South American beans and the results after the slow pour, the gravity drip and then the pressing the liquid through the beans and filter, resulted in a much richer, nuttier taste.

So all that was left was to try American beans in the Pour Over, for this Ash was keen to try as this is our method. He started with the filter, again learning new things – you should pour a little hot water, (not boiling, around 95°) over the paper filter and heat the cup, then discard the water and only then start making the coffee.

Apparently you should only grind the beans once you are ready and the filter is watered, because the grinding process destroys somewhere around 50% of the beans flavour in the first 3 minutes after grinding.

Ash started pouring water over the coffee and at that very moment a loud siren went off and the whole complex was evacuated because of a security alert

We never got to finish the process or to taste the difference in the Pour Over compared to the Aeropress with South American beans or blend our own flavors or anything that we looked forward to.

So if we were due to get anything (any freebies or the like) we didn’t come away with them, the workshop ended outside in the cold and we headed off into the dark, rainy night.

So unfortunately our experience remains incomplete, but we still learnt something and today as we sit writing this, our Pour Over coffee on the table in front of us is defenantly less sour and a little sweeter, so that is a positive.

So did that sounds like fun to you? Would you be interested in a workshop like this? (Minus the Security alarms hopefully!) Well Samsung run a number of classes and workshops. If you would like to try the Coffee Workshop the next one is on Dec 7th (Link) And the other workshops are here. (Link)

And that’s all for Today – to anyone who celebrates it, we’d like to say Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for following our blog each week and if you want to follow along please click subscribe and get our posts emailed to you each week.

So until next week and another post, bye!