Disclosure: This box was received free for review. This post contains affiliate links.
Angels Cup The Black Box July 2015 Review
Angels Cup is a coffee subscription box that has a little mystery to it. There are two subscriptions: The Cupping Flight and The Black Box, and each subscription send bags of mystery coffee to your door to taste and rate. The Cupping Flight is $8.99/month and you get four 1 oz samples of coffee.
The Black Box, which is what I am reviewing, is $19.99 for four 2.75 ozs of coffee. When you get your box, you download the app, which lets you can rate each of your coffees and note the taste notes. After you complete your tasting, you can compare your notes with the taste masters.
The Details:
Cost: The Cupping Flight: $8.99 and The Black Box: $19.99
What's in the box? Angels Cups packs of coffee in numbered bags, letting you taste something new without bias. Compare your taste impressions with the master tasters.
Website; https://angelscup.com
Angels Cups ships in a little brown box by USPS.
First Look
The inside of the box lid has tips on tasting the coffee, along with information about the app.
There was a welcome note about Angels Coffee, on the back, there was information on how to use the app to rate your coffee. The rest of this review is by my husband C.
C's Review:
I used the Angels Cup app to record my ratings for the coffees. The app is really cool it has a basic and advance level of ratings from aroma, color, to many areas of taste. There is also an assessment in the same areas by a selected roastmaster that is show along with your assessment to compare.
Some assessment information includes 9 levels of bean coloring from light or “half city” to darker or “nearly black”. Aroma and flavors are kinda grouped together in a cool wheel of selections and subselections. Then you move on to the taste descriptions of aftertaste, complexity,sweetness, and bitterness. More advance tasting includes acidity or the bright, tangy quality. You have an overall enjoyment score you would add as well at the end.
The idea behind this subscription is to taste the coffee without any bias. Once you taste the coffee, you can compare your notes with this cheat sheet. This sheet also tells you the name of each coffee.
My personal preference of coffee is to have a sweet tasting coffee that goes well with my milk and sugar.
Nyangwe – Kayanaza, Burundi The roastmaster placed this coffee as being sweet like milk chocolate with cherry aroma. He thought it was sweet like raisins with a black tea finish. I thought the coffee was not that sweet and had a strong bitterness taste even though it might have some fruitish flavor. I always try milk and sugar in my coffee but I might be better off without them. Overall this was my least favorite of the 4 coffees.
Los Naranjos – Huila, Columbia Again the roastmaster described the coffee with lots of terms related to how sweet it is. I must not have as sensitive of taste to pick up on some things. I did taste a pure chocolate type taste and the aroma was pleasant. My bitterness level was set much higher than the roastmaster. I think the body and complexity might be more than I thought at first. Overall I think this was in the middle of the road for the coffees.
Gaharo Hill Bunkeye Burundi The coffee is produced by Long Miles Coffee Project and farmers of Gaharo hill in the country of Burundi. The roastmaster mentions is grown at 1800 meters. Gaharo Hill was part of a special project to decrease the Potato defect by trying to control a beetle that causes this. In this coffee wasn't as sweet as I usually like it but having some sugar did help. The roastmaster focused on the citrus fruit type quality of the coffee but I had a hard time find it that taste exactly. Again, I am might just need more practice..
Kenya KII Factory AA This coffee is a fully washed bean grown around 1850 meters from Rung'eto Coop in Kiamabara, Kenya. Both me and the roastmaster thought this coffee had a strong scoring on the body. I thought it was still a little bitter but overall it was a decent coffee.
Final Thought: Overall I really like the setup of the box, the packaging was especially neat. The mysterious numbering of the bags really let me step out of my comfort zone and try something new. The rating app made this box a really pleasant experience to try. I really love the app and hope I get to rate more coffee in the future. If you want to try Angels Cup, use this link!
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