Joffrey’s Disney’s Aulani Coffee Blend: A Review
First things first, it was stale but promising
I don’t want anyone to assume I thought this would be a good idea. It’s a terrible idea, but the coffee was free and claimed to be a Kona blend. Joffrey’s Coffee provides coffee to the Disney hotels. I figured in the worst case, it would help me remember the baseline of the worst taste on my ever developing palate for espresso. I was definitely surprised by the result, and it tasted like it would be pretty good if it weren’t stale.
This review is meant for those who want to save a few dollars and brew in their room with the equipment there or their own equipment. I suspect the people who really love coffee would bring their own grinder and buy local beans (or go across the street to Island Vintage Coffee or the espresso bar in the hotel), but the prospect of free coffee is an interesting one. I know not everyone drinks espresso, but my palate is calibrated for espresso, so I brewed espresso with it.
We went to Disney’s Aulani for a week, and I was very excited for the coffee in Hawai’i. I ended up bringing back six pounds of coffee from four islands. I saw the Joffrey’s coffee bags in the room, and I thought, why not? I brought home a few, and I was ready to do something regretful.
Inside the bag is a filter bag filled with coarse ground coffee for the Mr. Coffee in the room, and it is unknown how long those bags are there before being replaced. There is also no expiration date. I poured the grinds out, and I used a Lume grinder to grind them to something suitable for an espresso machine.
I did a regular espresso shot with some modifications. I used 20g in a VST filter basket, and I put a paper filter cut to size meant for an Aeropress (i.e. the Scott Rao method). I then used my Kim Express to pull the shot (I’m aware there are some chipped paint spots and some coffee stains; it goes with being a messy scientist).
For the shot, I did 15s pre-infusion, 5s bloom, and 20s infusion. The result was a 1:1 super ristretto shots at 21.3% coffee extracted. I know this is a high extraction for a such a short shot, and my experiments have verified you don’t see much more extraction past the 1:1 ratio mark before hitting diminishing returns.
Now, for taste, it was stale. That being said, it wasn’t bitter. The shot had a great mouth feel, wasn’t acidic, and not burnt bitter. It had some bitter notes but the good kind. It was only a tiny bit sweet, and the aftertaste was reasonable. These factors combined gave it a higher score than I would have thought (5.14 final score, 0 is the worst, 14 is the best). There was very little crema because it was so old and degassed. I suspect it was roasted in 1984.
In conclusion, Disney should make sure this coffee is fresh because I’d love to try this coffee at its freshest, and brewing this coffee with some milk might just make a morning of your trip more bearable if you’re traveling with kids.
If you like, follow me on Twitter and YouTube where I post videos of espresso shots on different machines and espresso related stuff. You can also find me on LinkedIn.
Further readings of mine:
Staccato Espresso: Leveling Up Espresso
Measuring Espresso Extraction across the Filter
Coffee Solubility in Espresso: An Initial Study
Espresso Simulation: First Steps in Computer Models
The Tale of the Stolen Espresso Machine
Affordable Coffee Grinders: a Comparison
