My first coffee, the espresso entry coffee you could say, was a terrific way to start. Read a bit about my experience and see if it’s a coffee for you?
First things first, this is a coffee made by the Swiss roastery Schwiizer Schüümli. It’s named after a Swiss specialty coffee recipe Schüümli which seems to be something like a long espresso with foam on top (or just… caffé crema).
While it definitely delivered on the promise of crema, it also was a great espresso base for drinking black, in drinks, or in milk drinks (cappuccino was absolutely delicious with that coffee).
Beans overview
100% arabica coffee (no origin provided), medium roast, nice and small, consistent beans.
One thing that definitely stuck out to me was how clean the beans were, there was not much chaff1 and the beans were unbroken, had a nice shine, and consistently roasted color. From the whole bag, I could have counted on fingers of one hand the singular beans that were slightly darker.
The roasting date was printed on the package — my package was roasted 2 months before I got it, which is great and a sign of good quality. Sold in a 1kg bag with the CO2 valve.
No stones and no other nasty surprises, obviously.
Score: 10 / 10 — well done Schwiizer Schüümli!
What is the taste?
The package promises dark berries and toffee flavors and I 100% agree about the berries part, while I felt like the toffee was closer to dark caramel or chocolate. I suppose potato potato?
The taste was very nice, the acidity was pleasant and didn’t taste sour or under-extracted2. I really enjoyed this coffee both black (with a dominant note of the berries) and with various amounts of milk (with a dominant note of toffee or chocolate).
Score: 9 / 10 — the taste was great but I would never have said it was toffee.
Was it hard to dial in?
This coffee was fairly great straight from the box and gave me plenty of dial in possibilities — in other words: this coffee forgives a lot. It was actually very enjoyable to tinker with that coffee and I feel like more than 90% of the shots were successful.
Schwiizer Schüümli Crema forgives a lot and is fairly easy to dial in!
My grinder setting for this coffee was between 6.12 and 6.103 and I was able to make a pleasant 1:2 ratio in 25-30 seconds with a superb tasting shot and beautiful (yet not really thick) crema.
Score: 9/10 — while the coffee was easy to dial in, the berry notes did a number on me at some point ;-)
Do I recommend it?
Yes, I wholeheartedly recommend it! This coffee was not only easy to dial in, but also tasted great, made a wonderful base for a wide variety of coffee drinks, and in general, it’s a solid option for people who want a nice cup of coffee without the stress of calibration, taste tests, and all that work.
Schwiizer Schüümli produces a variety of roasts and I plan to test more of them at some point with their espresso roast coming mid-May! :-)
Total score: 28 / 30 — 93%, totally recommended 🤩
Price: 14.99€ / 1kg — a fairly average price, I actually did manage to get it at a discount
What’s coming next?
I just finished the Dallmayr d’Oro Crema “Selection of the year 2022: Hakuna Matata” and I have many… thoughts on that one — stay tuned, the review is coming in a week or two!
Do you want to see me review a particular coffee? Well, you’re lucky because it’s definitely possible for paid subscribers to recommend the next coffees! :-)
Chaff is the leftover skins of the coffee bean that are peeling off during the roasting process; they leave a somewhat unpleasant dirty taste and muddy up the coffee quite a bit — you do not want them.
We will have an issue on that topic, I promise!
X.Y means internal level X and external level Y — this information is not a strict guideline since your grinder will be completely different but it can give you a general idea of the dialing in effort and parity between different beans.