Every Tuesday a new Batavia Coffee blog appears, in which we take you with us in the world of Dutch Coffee. Last week you could read that we tested over a hundred specialty coffees to finally get a selection of six flavors! In today’s blog, we discuss how we used the opinion of the Dutch public to decide which three of the six flavors was best for Batavia. At Hoog Catherijne, a well know shopping plaza in the center of Utrecht, we let about 600 Dutch citizens taste the different flavors. Also, check out our inspiring recipes with black ice coffee here! 

Black ice coffee suits the customer’s palate

After extensive testing and tasting on our own, we decided it was time to test what flavors the Dutch citizens would be most interested in. Through a startup platform in Utrecht we were invited to create a pop-up store at Hoog Catherijne. This was the first event at which we could sample big amounts of coffee to the Dutch public. We tried our best to use this possibility to connect with as much people as possible.

That looks nice!

With a specific goal in mind and a planning that only displayed ‘to do’s’, on reaching the weekend we almost forgot to sleep. At 23:00, the day before opening our pop-up store, we found it necessary to create a bar completely made out of wood, because it would make our playground look slightly better. Eventually, we left home heading for Hoog Catherijne the next morning without any sleep. We survived the first day being barely able to still stand on our feet, but what a successful day it was. A lot of Dutch citizens turned out to be curious about Dutch Coffee Makers and came to ask how the black ice coffee received its name in Asia.

Six hundred tasters

The second day turned out to be a huge success as well. Leaving us with most of our palettes empty. At the end of the weekend about six hundred people tasted our coffee. The flavors from which most coffees sold at the end of the weekend served as an indicator for the coffees we ended up selecting as the final three, namely the Limu, the Santuario and the Yirgacheffe.

Ice coffee on a Christmas market?

Since the start of our company people kept saying that the Netherlands doesn’t have the climate to favor black ice coffee. We did not agree and used their feedback as a motivation to prove them wrong. We decided to sell our coffee at the Christmas market in Leiden. If our coffee could sell at temperatures below zero, then we would probably be ready to sell it in the Netherlands during the winter months too!

To be continued…