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I got home from work a month and a half ago to see the 4 inch by 11 inch box on my kitchen counter. Inside the box were 4 perfectly packaged 2.75 ounce coffee samples in small black bags arranged in a neat little row. My Black Box from Angel’s Cup had arrived and it was pretty impressive.
What is Angel’s Cup
I’ve talked about Angel’s Cup a few times before but in case you missed it.
Angel’s Cup is a coffee subscription service that is different from all the other coffee subscription services. While I believe every subscription service tries to bring something different to the table, the Angel’s Cup team has succeeded and brought something of value, originality and uniqueness to the world of third wave coffee. Here is how:
A variety of coffee to try
Angel’s Cup offers a weekly, biweekly or monthly subscription plan which contains four unique coffees. Each time you receive you subscription in the mail, you will get four one ounce samples of new coffees to try. This means if you are a weekly subscriber, you will have the opportunity to try 208 different coffees over the course of a year. That is a lot of coffee sampling.
Anonymous coffee
The best way to make an unbiased judgement when tasting something is to remove any variables that will put a preconceived notion in your brain and bias your opinion.
Angel’s Cup takes away anything that would identify a coffee. There is no fancy roaster packages or exotic origin names. You are given four packets of coffee, each with a code unique to that coffee. (There is also an info sheet that gives a bio on each coffee if you are interested in peeking.)
The blind tasting gives you the chance to brew and taste the coffee without knowing who roasted it or what coffee growing region it is from. You get to make an unbiased judgement on the coffee, which is something that is actually pretty hard to arrange in typical tasting scenarios.
Great Coffee
The coffee that the Angel’s Cup team tracks down for each week’s tasting is outstanding and from some of the best roasters in the country.
An outstanding free app
Angel’s Cup provides a free coffee tasting app that can be used in tandem with the tastings or simply used solo. You do not need to be an Angel’s Cup subscriber to download and use the app. You can even create a profile and save your tastings for free.
The app gives you a choice between a beginners or an advanced coffee tasting and then walks you through the entire process. You can even “jot” down a few of your own notes at the end and save the tasting to your profile for reference later.
I like the app because it encourages people to sit down and taste their coffee and really think about the flavors. The app supplies you with a variety of flavor groups and more specific flavors to choose from to help you think about what your taste. It helps you practice processing what you taste which is really the only way to improve and learn to be a more attentive coffee drinker.
Compare with Roasters Notes
The really cool part about the Angel’s Cup app happens when you use it in conjunction with the tastings. When you have finished a tasting using the app and a coffee supplied by Angel’s Cup, you get to compare what you tasted to what the roaster tasted.
Amazing right?
With the tasting flight and app combo you have the potential to not only taste 208 coffee’s each year, you also get the opportunity to compare your blind tasting results to those of the company who roasted the coffee.
To me, that is one of the most beautiful things about the subscription. I love going through and seeing how close I got to what the roaster was tasting. It is like a fun game that also improves your coffee tasting skills.
The Black Box
Last week, Angel’s Cup officially released the Black Box.
The Angel’s Cup one ounce tasting flights dramatically altered how coffee enthusiast experience, learn and interact about coffee. It gives subscribers a kind of access to coffee they’ve never had before (you can try four new coffees every week). The Black Box brings all that and adds one more crucial component. Quantity.
There is over 2.5 times more of each coffee in the Black Box and that makes a huge difference. Here are a few things the extra coffee does for your subscription:
Experimentation
Each 2.75 ounce package is enough to brew 5 different small cups of coffee. You now have the opportunity to experiment with brewing method, grind size and various techniques. You can do a cupping of the coffee and still have plenty of coffee left for trying your favorite brew methods or to go off the reservation and try something new. You can see how the differences in preparation can highlight different things about the coffee.
Sharing
There is no more squirreling away your precious one ounce portions of mystery coffee to be consumed and evaluated in private. You can now brew a cup for a friend, yourself and still have plenty of coffee left over to evaluate at a later date.
A Giveaway
If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty pumped about the Black Box and I’d like to give one away.
The Details:
I’m giving away one Angel’s Cup Black Box. The winner will be randomly chosen from people who meet the following criteria:
- U.S. residents only (sorry to my international friends).
- Subscribe and comment on this blog post sometime before Saturday August 1, 2015 11:59 PM CST.
- Contest winner will be notified by e-mail by August 4, 2015.
How to Enter:
In order to be eligible to win the Black Box you must subscribe to my blog and leave a comment on this blog post. In the comment, I’d like you to give one of your favorite roasters some love and tell me what your favorite brewing method is.
You can subscribe to the blog in the side bar at the top right corner of my blog or for mobile users in the footer on the bottom of the blog.
I think the idea of comparing our amateur taste buds with those that prepared the roast for us is genius and really breaks down perceived barriers between roaster and consumer. Angels Cup seems to actually add a service for both consumer and roaster- something rare to subscriptions.
That is an interesting point. I have never thought of it much from the roaster side. I guess from a roaster’s perspective it is a way of helping your consumers to understand what you work so hard to pull out of the coffee.
I’d have to say, one of my favorite roasters are one of my most recently tried roasters, Bindle Coffee. I was blown away by the bag of coffee I received from them. No matter how I brewed it, it was delicious, especially on the Chemex; my go to brew device!
Just checking out Bindle Coffee tonight. Thanks for the recommend. I will have to give their coffee a try.
Angels Cup is an awesome service.
I’ve been following Angels Cup on Instagram for awhile. I’ve been wanting to try them out and now that they came out with the black box makes me want to try them more. I love tring a lot of different coffee all the time but never done a coffee subscription before. But may give them a shot. Have you had any other subscriptions before? If so how do they compare.
Dustin,
Besides all the great features, the Black Box just looks exciting and slick when it arrives. Bonus.
If you love to try a lot of coffees, I would definitely recommend Angel’s Cup. You can try a ton of different origins, roasters and processing methods. Using the app along side those coffees really helps you to start sorting out what your like, don’t like and some of the differences.
I also have a curated subscription that delivers 12 ounces of whole bean coffee each month. I like that for the random coffee surprise but you don’t get anywhere near the exposure to different coffees.
Leaving a comment and subscribed to your blog but only to say a hearty “heck yes!” for everything about Angels’ Cup. I posted the info to Facebook and Twitter to encourage folks to enter your giveaway but please exclude me as I’m already a raving Angels’ Cup subscriber! Look forward to their community growing even better as we all connect and learn from our own experiences and sharing what we found with others.
Thanks Sharon, I couldn’t agree more.
I don’t have much experience with trying different roasters, but we have a local place called The Kaffeeklatsch that has been my go-to for ages. My favorite brewing method is pour over using a Nee porcelain dripper.
Hey Mandy!
Kaffeeklatsch definitely gets points for having an awesome name. I will have to look ‘um up. I have not seen the Nee dripper before thanks for bringing it up. It is nice to know about another affordable dripper option.
I adore this idea. And I’ve been dying to try some new things, I just have no idea where to start.
Angel’s Cup is a great place to start. On a limited budget, getting a few of the 1 oz tasting flights can be a great way to explore a lot of coffee and practice tasting.
I subscribed to your blog. My favorite roaster is a local roaster here in Arizona, Peixoto Coffee, they are “crop to cup” – they grow the beans on the family farm in Brazil, roast them in-house here in Chandler and offer a wide variety of pour over methods to choose from. Delicious! My current favorite is a cold brew for the summer but for hot coffee I enjoy a cup from the Chemex.
Thanks Sheila! I will am going to have to check out Peixoto Coffee sounds like a great place.
This was my first week with Angels’ Cup, and the new Black Box is what pushed me over the hump to finally decide to give the service a try. I think the concept is brilliant, especially because there have certainly been times I’ve bought a new coffee only to be somewhat disappointed. Having 4 small samples adds a lot of value, and it’s fun too!
No need to enter me because I think somebody who hasn’t tried this yet should win, but my favorite new roaster is Andytown here in San Francisco.
Thanks for dropping by and giving your 2 cents. Jeff and the Angel’s Cup crew are definitely coming up with some innovative stuff and I guess they are planning on adding more to the app soon. Woot!