Rum Tum Tiger!
This week we launched a variation of a coffee everyone seemed to love last year, which was our Bombay Bourbon coffee. This year we elected to release Rum Tum Tiger which is a Rum infused single origin Brazilian coffee.
Barrel-aged coffee is the process of rolling green coffee beans in an emptied oak barrels used to age Rum, Whiskey and other spirits. The beans stay in the cask for 30 days, and are rotated or rolled several times each week. The wooden cask or keg absorbs a lot of the rum and is just the right amount to infuse that taste in the highly pours coffee beans. So, what about those beans…?
We used a single origin Brazilian micro-lot coffee. Brazil Legender is co-op blend made up of small farmers in the micro-regions of the Minas Gerais State of Brazil. Most coffee plantations in Brazil are known for large coffee crops on large farms. Legender goes in the opposite direction consisting of small farms with an attention to detail. While this may yield a smaller harvest, we believe it produces a much, much bigger taste.
Similarly, many large coffee companies that do bourbon or rum barrel coffees, use the beans from these large plantations. Their logic being, that the beans don’t need to be anything special, the personality will come from the rum infusion.
For Catfight, this doesn’t compute. Why would you not use a specialty coffee when you are taking the extra steps for this labor and time intensive process? That’s like painting a mini van Ferrari Red.
Rum Tum Tiger may contain trace amounts of alcohol, but for the most part the alcohol is burned off in the roasting process, much like it would in a Rum Cake. We loved the Bombay Bourbon coffee, but we are absolutely possessed by Rum Tum Tiger. Find out why here!