Meet the Angel’s Cup Black Box

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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.