Style over substance?
I admit, I fell for it. I love coffee, I love my DeLonghi, I love using independent and specialty beans and trying new single origins or bespoke blends.
Yet I totally fell for the glitzy, sparkly and frankly, beautifully branded Bacha Coffee.
Airport shopping at its finest
The first time I saw one of their shops was a couple of years ago while transiting in the wonderful Changi, Singapore airport hub. They are present in a couple of terminals with enormous shops, and you can’t miss them: high ceilings, walls stacked with branded steel tins of beans, and aisles selling ground coffee bags and elegant accessories.
This year, on my way to Bali and with a couple of hours to kill, I stopped by on my outbound stop over. I chatted to a lovely salesman, and picked us a smart looking, clearly expensively printed, coffee menu. Pages and pages of coffees, from their signature flavoured, to specialty single origins (such as Blue Mountains) as well as decafs.
I took my time to peruse the list (my holiday downtime) and on the trip back, I went back to a Bacha Coffee shop with intent. Intent to buy.
And buy I did. I spent the equivalent of £40 on four different beans’ types, each in 100gr bags. I ended up with 2 flavoured coffees (I blame this to the jetlag), one single origin Cuba and a decaff Brigadeiro. They have no coffee with dark roast, which I thought quite odd (italians like a darker roast, but surely we cannot be the only country that does!).
Finally making Bacha Coffee at home
I couldn’t wait to get home and start using those beans, with my trusted but unforgiving DeLonghi Specialista Arte.
I started with the Magic Instanbul beans, described as:
A tantalising journey of the senses, this exclusive creation has notes of freshly cut honeycomb, which give a delicious sweetness to pure Arabica coffee beans. Balanced by notes of green almond, this cup will whisk you away.
Wonderful aroma (and I did smell the beans in the shop obviously), caramel notes, sweet chocolate. Except that.. after the first couple of cups, it just got sickly. And even after plenty of other beans having gone through my grinder, the aroma is still there, lingering and it’s just too much. Moreover, miss DeLonghi did not like the beans at all, never reaching the ‘optimal zone’ and never yielding much of a crema, sadly.
The second pack I opened was the Cuba Serrano Superior single origin beans. Unflavoured, these were a mid roast, even though they are listed as medium dark.
Scattered across the hills of the Escambray Mountains are some of the most beautiful coffee plantations in the world. The farms in the highest plains benefit from mild temperatures and frequent rainfall year-round. Plantations are kept healthy under the protective shade of leguminous, trees such as Ingas, Erythrinas and Leucaenas, and yield exquisite Serrano coffees with a smooth and robust flavour and a nutty aftertaste.
Not too bad, but neither anything memorable, in fact quite forgettable as much as I love Cuba and I have fond memories of hand roasted beans by the roadside in the middle of the island, this was disappointingly bland.
I then moved onto the decaff, for which I picked their Brigadeiro blend. Described as
A dessert in itself, this delightful blend of naturally CO2 decaffeinated Arabica coffees highlights gentle notes of sugar cane and finishes with notes of salted butter and hot chocolate. Delightful!
I had high expectations, as I find it hard to find a decent decaff. This was even less loved by Miss DeLonghi, infact the dial coming nowhere near the start of the optimal zone, zero crema and performing – even freshly ground – worse than a much better Lavazza ground (!) decaff.
The final coffee I bought was the promisingly named Chocolate Hill. Its description chimes:
Chocolate lovers will appreciate this molten brew brought alive with hot spices and cracked cocoa bean. The perfect cup to revive the senses and indulge the palate.
I am sort of scared to open the pack and try. Will it be as disappointing as the others or will it finally redeem my opinion of Bacha coffees?
Conclusion
I totally fell for it. Despite knowing fully well that beans should be consumed fairly soon after roasting and if they come from an open tin into a sealed bag, the latter’s seal doesn’t really do anything; despite my habitual preference for small, independent roasters I trust and know well; despite my advocacy for fairly paid farmers and ethical practices and sustainability in the coffee industry.
Despite all this, I fell for a massive marketing operation which has created a beautiful, perfect coffee identity which catches the eye (and the credit card) in spectacular fashion.
Long live Batcha Coffee, but – like Ulysses – I will tie myself to Changi’s transit lounge next time I am passing by and avoid your tempting song.
