We were sent a bag of Ethiopian Kaffa Forest beans from York Coffee Emporium for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

My love of a good brew is not a secret. We recently put our gorgeous retro coffee grinder on our kitchen wall and we were desperate to use it, with a degree of perfect timing we were sent some lovely beans from York Coffee Emporium to try.

The beans we were sent were Ethiopian Kaffa Forest beans and had been freshly roasted in York. Just grinding the beans made the house smell absolutely incredible (if you’re trying to sell your house, don’t bother making a pot of coffee, grind the beans instead, it’s just fantastic).

My friend has a cafe which is well known for its tea, but when I visit him we always drink pot after pot of good strong coffee, so I was keen to try it out with him.

We brewed the coffee and it smelt beautiful. The flavour was mellow, almost chocolatey caramel, it’s a really easy drinking coffee and perfect for weekend drinking whilst leisurely reading the papers. The Ethiopian Kaffa was described on the packet as having “lovely floral notes; delicious juicy apricot, forest honey and tongue hugging caramel”. We didn’t really get the apricot, but it was a delightfully soothing mocha-caramel brew.

I fancied something sweet, so we made a little take on affogato. Traditionally it’s a shot of espresso poured over vanilla gelato or ice cream; sometimes with a liqueur poured over the top. Bereft of liqueur I sweetened a shot of the Ethiopian Kaffa with sugar and poured it over some ice cream. It was delicious, admittedly not the traditional affogato, but close enough for a daytime treat.

The Ethiopian Kaffa is a bit deceptive. It doesn’t taste super-strong, in fact we both drank double the amount of coffee we normally would. It’s so mellow and buttery and easy to drink. York Coffee Emporium give this a 4/5 strength rating. As I type this a good two hours after drinking two pots I’m feeling a lovely coffee buzz. Do not be deceived by it.

It’s a lovely cuppa and I’m looking forward to enjoying it again whilst perusing the Sunday papers. I’ll most definitely be ordering from York Coffee Emporium again, I’m pretty keen to try a few of their other roasts and blends, my coffee loving cafe owning friend was impressed enough to say he’d stock it, so it must be good!