Coffee Area Coffee House 珈琲院 (Taiwan –Taichung)

On the 3rd day of our sponsored Whirlwind 5D4N trip to Taiwan, we arose bright and early to make the best of a beautiful day. Seriously, a blue sky day with cold crisp air just makes my heart sing! I was all raring to venture out, but we had to pack our tummies with a little something first because the 1st stop of the day was to go coffee tasting!

Actually, we didn’t just get the opportunity to sample freshly brewed coffee, we got to witness the ENTIRE coffee roasting process from bean to brew!

This is the boss of Coffee Area. He is an extremely jovial character, with a rather humorous streak. The shop is only open from Wednesday to Sunday. We visited on a Tuesday and we heard that he’d specially opened his shop just for our visit. This is a rare treat because we were told that Taichung people are laid back, many of whom work for fun and not for a living. You will find that when you are in Taichung, shops may not open all hours of the day just to cater to customers or to generate the most amount of profit. On the contrary, people are friendlier than in Taipei.

Don’t mind the camera man at the back. He filmed us the whole of our third day in Taiwan. Felt a little like a celebrity!

This is the portable roaster. I used to think that coffee roasting was a very complicated process best left to the experts, but after viewing this contraption work its magic, I feel compelled to purchase one of these babies.

First you feed the roaster with fresh beans. Notice that when the coffee beans are fresh, they are green.

A closer look at the inside of the roaster. There is a flame under the roaster, and the beans get spun around at high speed within the roaster for even distribution of heat. The coffee bean colour chart on the left indicates the various changes in colour of the coffee beans.

You probably can’t notice the difference, but these coffee beans have been roasting for about 3 minutes already. The entire process takes about 20 minutes, depending on the size of the machine and the heat source of course.

There comes a point when the coffee beans start smoking, but this isn’t because the beans are burning. The smokiness is caused by the escaping moisture from the beans.

The beans are more or less done.

The freshly roasted coffee beans! Notice that the skins of the beans have flaked off. They have to be extracted and must not be ground.

Here comes the elbow grease part. Guess I have to earn the right to enjoy a cuppa. But it’s actually quite fun. It just takes a few minutes of grinding, and when all the coffee beans have been ground into a fine powder, the handle can be swung around without any pressure at all.

After the beans were ground, it was time to brew the coffee and sample it!

Pretty good cup of coffee. Had a hint of sweetness and berry undertones.

There was time to also sample some coffee brewed the Turkish way.

Not my cup of tea if you ask me. It was too bitter, and the dregs were floating all around!

Trying to evoke the Feeling…

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Read about the rest of my sponsored trip to Taiwan here, sponsored by the Isee Taiwan Foundation.

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Coffee Area 珈琲院

Address : 台中市西區存中街165號

No. 165, Cúnzhōng St, Xi District Taichung City, Taiwan 403

Telephone : (04) 2376-1273

https://www.facebook.com/coffeeareatw

Directions to Coffee Area