Tuesday, 29th September is National Coffee Day in South Africa and to celebrate, we are giving away a hamper of Checkers Foreign Ground coffees. Visit our Facebook Page to enter.

 

While I am an avid coffee drinker/addict I will admit that I do not know much about it, other than how I like to drink it (milk and a teaspoon of sugar) and thus I started a web quest reading up about it and discovered these five facts:

• The legend goes that Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herder, discovered the energy giving properties of coffee after seeing how energized his goats were after eating the red berries and decided to try some for himself.
• The coffee bean is really a seed found inside the red fruit of the coffee plant. Interestingly, the caffeine we crave is actually the plant’s natural defence against the animals that want to eat it.
• Most of us need oil to get around in our cars, but coffee makes the world go round – Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, the first is oil.
• If you drink your coffee black without any sugar it has no kilojoules.
• Most of the world’s coffee is grown in a place called the ‘Bean Belt’. This is a region between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and offers the best climate for cultivating the coffee plant.

 

Checkers Foreign Ground range

The Checkers Foreign Ground range features 10 single origin coffees grown in countries in the Bean Belt – Ethiopia, Rwanda, Malawi, Brazil, Peru, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica as well as a limited edition coffee from Tanzania. They vary in their degree of roast from a Medium Roast (3) to a Dark Roast (5) – Roast refers to the process of roasting green coffee beans over heat until they transform into the brown beans we are familiar with and is responsible for creating the flavour we identify as coffee. A 250 g pack of ground or beans single origin foreign ground coffee is available at Checkers stores for approximately R59.99. You can find out more about the range here.

This past weekend Shelley, myself and our husbands tried three of the Checkers Foreign Ground African single origin coffees to see if we could discern any differences in the taste.  We tried the following coffees: Ethiopia, Malawi and the limited edition from Tanzania. For consistency and to make sure that we were not masking any flavours we made all three in separate plungers and tasted all of them black, with no sugar.

Ethiopia – Medium Roast (3)

According to the packet this coffee is meant to be full bodied with over-ripe fruit notes and a sweet jam finish.

This was quite nutty in taste, but had an intriguing aroma unlike the other two coffees tasted. The guys seemed to like this one more as they found it quite robust.

Malawi – Dark Roast (5)

According to the packet this coffee is meant to be intense with hints of caramel and an aromatic berry finish.

On tasting this one we all agreed that it was smooth, well rounded and delicious. It would serve well as an everyday morning coffee before breakfast.

Tanzania – Medium Dark Roast (4)

According to the packet this coffee is meant to be bright and full bodied with fruity and floral notes.

On first sip this coffee was a bit more bitter than the other two, but it revels its full bodied taste and would provide quite a coffee kick in the morning.

 

We are still planning to taste some of the other coffees in the range, but we’ll save those for future posts. So, be sure to drop by again soon to find out how we enjoyed the other variants.

 

Checkers offering for National Coffee Day

To celebrate National Coffee Day (29 September) Checkers will be giving you the chance to taste a Foreign Ground Americano or Cappuccino for free. All you need to do is Dial *120*569*99# to redeem! 1 per person, limited quantity available.

With its amazing offerings, Checkers endeavours to make great quality coffee convenient and accessible to their customers – all at supermarket prices.

For coffee tips and tricks or more details on Checkers’ extensive coffee range, visit www.checkers.co.za/food/coffee.html

#CheckersCoffee / @CheckersSA