Stay Grounded A Blind Coffee Tasting Blunder During the production of TN2 issue 4 I sat down with two friends to take a scientifically flawed test. The two tasters were Ursula Dale and Liana Parachaki. Ursula admitted to not being a coffee connoisseur by any means, meanwhile Liana is a self proclaimed coffee addict who I have been known to criticise for her explorations with instant coffee… a claim I would come to regret. What we were interested in testing not only which coffee place was the best, but if our intuitions about coffee held while we didn’t know what we were drinking. For this blind testing we selected eight popular shops from around Trinity:
WORDS BY Sam Hayes • • • • • • • •
Starbucks Costa Coffee Angel Offbeat Café Napoli Dublin Barista School The Arts Block Lavazza Machine Tesco Gold Instant Coffee (because we had it lying around in the office)
We used Americanos to put all of the coffees on an even playing field, and with rogues gallery assembled, we began tasting:
Costa (Founded 1971): Starbucks (Founded 1971): Coming in at three euro, Starbucks was the second most expensive of the coffees and is from the most successful chain of the bunch. Operating in 78 countries as of 2019, with 31,256 locations, 67 of which are in the Republic of Ireland. The corporation grossed 24.71 Billion in terms of revenue in 2018, so is its popularity justified, or is it just marketing? In short Starbucks did not play well with the tasters with both participants describing the coffee as burnt and watery.
Ursula: 5 Liana: 4
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Starting out in London Costa another global chain operating as a subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Corporation. With 3882 locations across 32 countries it would be an understatement to call the company successful, a fact that Liana would describe as well earned declaring it her favourite of the coffees. In the test upon tasting it Liana exclaimed “That’s Costa!”. Both participants described it as the hottest, though it is important to remember that the Coffees were bought sequentially so while this affected the ratings it may not be true if you are picking up your daily dose of caffeine.
Ursula: 5 Liana: 8
