A few weeks ago, Angels' Cup gained a new follower on Twitter. It was the folks at Vinebox, a wine subscription service offering small tasting flights. As the founder of a coffee subscription service also offering small tasting flights, I couldn't resist signing up. I think my experience as the founder of a similar company (but in a different market) might make for an interesting perspective on what Vinebox is up to and whether or not you should give it a try. For a little background, before I launched Angels' Cup, I actually considered doing a wine club but passed on the idea in favor of coffee. The name "Angles' Cup" comes from the wine and whisky world where "angel's share" or "devil's take"refers to the small portion of wine/whiskey that evaporates through the walls of the barrel as it ages. It was fun to imagine that missing portion being sent to subscribers. I chose to go with coffee instead of whiskey or wine for a few reasons. Most importantly, sampling 208 different coffees per year is affordable. A cup of the best coffee on earth costs less than $3, and in my opinion that makes it a better way for average people to develop a sharper sense of taste. But despite the fact I keep hearing that "coffee is more complex than wine", I don't believe it. Coffee technically might have more chemical compounds in it, but wine has so much more going on in terms of varietal, origin, and vintage. So I was extremely excited to see that Vinebox not only launched a wine tasting subscription, but did a better job than I ever could! I signed up immediately, and a week or two later, my Vinebox arrived! ??

Website and Packaging - 10/10

Wow this is nice packaging. The bottles are beautiful and photogenic. The box has a magnetic closure. Those aren't cheap. Everything fits together well, the chance of a bottle breaking in shipping is probably 0%, you can throw this thing down a flight of stairs and it won't break. A+ work, Vinebox!

Value - 6/10

Vinebox costs $35/month. Plus $6 s&h equals $41 total per box. Each box contains three 100ml vials of wine. A typical wine bottle is 750ml. So the equivalent cost per bottle is $102.50! Here's how a 100ml pour looks in a glass:

 

Now, I hate when people think about Angels' Cup this way because if you want to minimize your cost per ml, you should buy a case of wine, not sample vials. That being said, it's hard to resist the psychological draw of doing the math because it lets you compare apples to apples. And at $102.50/bottle, this is an expensive apple. At this price, I mentally can't just allow myself to relax and be a subscriber indefinitely. I'm going to have to reevaluate whether or not this is worth it every time I receive a box. The other questions need to answer is how expensive are the wines? This table shows each wine, the full bottle price listed on Vinebox.com, and the price I could get each bottle for according to wine-searcher.com Wine, Vinebox Cost, wine-searcher Cost 2014 La Damme Blanche, $25, $17-19* 2009 Château Suau, $35, $18** 2013 Castelmaure Cuvée no 3, $40, $23** Average, $33, $19.67

* 2014 not available, this is the average price for 2011-2013

** Not available in the US, based on conversion of euros to dollars

That doesn't look so good... I'm paying about a 3x markup for the sample sizes. But there's one major caveat to consider: None of these wines were readily available in the US, and I have no idea what import fees, taxes, and shipping would add to the cost. It's entirely possible that if these were on the shelves, they could all be $40-50 bottles. Eventually we'll receive some samples that are available in the US and be able to make a better comparison. I feel like part of the value I could get out of Vinebox is trying things I can't afford to drink on a regular basis, so I really hope the numbers come in higher when we're able to make that apples-to-apples comparison. At Angels' Cup, an 11oz box of coffee costs $22 (shipped), and includes 4 samples of coffee that if purchased individually would have cost $18-21 for 12oz anyway. Angels' Cup isn't the cheapest coffee per oz, but it is the cheapest way to try a ton of different coffees. At $41 for 3 samples, it might be cheaper to simply to go a wine bar and share a few glasses with a friend. Also important to note, the wines were all good. All three were from Bordeaux, and fortunately I've had a lot of Bordeaux wines in the last two years. It's a hit or miss region and sometimes you get real swill. All three selections were what I would consider to be in the top 25% for wines up to $50. No stinkers.

Oxidation - 8/10

My key concern going into this wasn't so much the cost, it was oxidation. When you expose a wine to air, it begins to oxidize which significantly changes the flavor. You can't just open a bottle of wine, pour it into a vial, and ship it to someone (legality aside). Either the winery has to bottle it straight into the vial from the barrel, or the exchange has to be done in an oxygen-free environment. These particular vials say "Bottled for Vinebox Inc. by WIT France". A quick Google search for "WIT France wine bottling" yields this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8IWgj40Pss (which I recommend you don't watch). If I had seen that video before subscribing, I wouldn't have joined. It was not confidence inspiring. But since joining, I've chatted about oxidation with the founder, and that's not the machine they're using. They're using some sort of contained processing line. Ignore the video. I was planning to buy full bottles of the Vinebox wines to sample side-by-side with the vials, but unfortunately couldn't find any in the US. I think I heard a rumor that the second delivery will feature mostly Californian wines, so maybe I'll be able to do a better analysis next time. For now, my inexpert opinion is that the white wine was 100% fresh. It had nice buttery notes and tropical fruit acidity. The reds didn't taste oxidized, but I wouldn't aerate or decant them either. Again, not an expert on this stuff, I just know what wine tastes like a few days after opening and I'm listening to my tongue. Hopefully I'll be able to be more precise next month and update this review.

Overall - 8/10

At the end of the day, I've decided to keep my subscription for another month. Here's a rough guide to help you make your decision:

• Who should subscribe today:
  • Gift Buyers - I think that Vinebox is a particularly excellent gift idea, it looks great, it's fun, and the wines were delicious. You won't be disappointed.
  • Casual Explorers - If your goal is to try a few extra wines this year without breaking the bank, Vinebox makes a fun monthly subscription.
• Who should wait:
  • Aspiring Somms - If you're signing up because you just watched Somm and want to get into wine, your money is probably better spent on a WSET or wine tasting class, or even just splitting some bottles with other friends who share your interest.
  • Value Hunters - The value proposition is this subscription's weakness. It's an easy problem for the founders to fix though, all they need to do is select more expensive wines. If the box included three $50+ wines, this subscription would be indispensable to me.

Final Thoughts

All this comes with one major caveat. This is Vinebox's first shipment ever. If I was an Angels' Cup subscriber for the first shipment, I would have unsubscribed in a heartbeat. We shipped some coffees that we weren't terribly proud of because we thought our audience would want to learn the difference between light and dark roasted coffee. We also foolishly forced ourselves to ship coffees from a wide geographic range at the expense of flavor. A year later, we have stronger relationships with roasters, we know what our subscribers are looking for, and we're 100% confident in the coffee we ship. I'm optimistic that Vinebox will be able to gather feedback from early users, improve the service, and build an awesome business. They're off to a good start, and I'm excited to be along for the ride!

Join Vinebox OR Join Angels' Cup

Depending on who you ask, acidity in coffee is either a) the cause of heart burn and/or acid reflux, or b) the source delicious fruity complexity, a highly desirable characteristic of the best coffees. Armed with a digital pH probe and inspired by an episode of Sesame Street I was watching with my son, I set out to learn a little bit about acidity in coffee. Basically I wanted to answer two questions:

1. Does the acidity we taste in coffee correlate in any way with the actual pH of the coffee?
2. If there is a difference, can it be significant enough to support claims made by roasters of "low-acid" coffee?

Before I bore you with text, here are the pH readings I took over the weekend: Substance, pH Whole Milk, 6.9 NYC Tap Water, 6.7 Sumatran Coffee (low acidity), 4.6 Panama Coffee (medium acidity), 4.5 Kenyan Coffee (high acidity), 4.3 Apple Juice, 3.8 Grapefruit Juice, 3.6 Blueberry Lemonade, 2.9

*If it's been a while since you took chemistry in high school, a pH of 7 is neutral, and a lower pH means more acidity.

Coffee Acidity: Flavor vs pH

I went into this experiment assuming that there would be absolutely no pH difference between coffee that tasted very acidic or not acidic at all. Surprisingly, there was a small but direct correlation with flavor and pH. To perform the experiment, basically I brewed three coffees at the same time, 4 minute brew time, 16:1 brew ratio, then let them cool to about 100 ℉. Kenya is a region known for very high acidity (in a good way) and this coffee in particular was SL-28, the most acidic varietal. Sumatra is a region known for very low acidity, and this was a particularly flat Sumatra. We didn't ship it in our subscription (and no, it wasn't from Bespoken, that picture above is just to show off my fancy lab-ware). The Panama was somewhere in-between. You'll just have to trust my tastebuds on that one. Or as it turns out, my pH probe. Because I went into this experiment expecting to see no difference in pH, I sorta skimped on the freshness. The coffees I sampled were 3 weeks old, and the acidity was noticeably lower (in terms of taste) than when they were fresher. I was concerned that freshness would mess up the pH readings because fresher beans contain carbon dioxide, and CO2 increases acidity. However, based on these results, I'm curious to test a batch of coffee 3 days off roast to see if the difference is more noticeable. Stay tuned for a Part 2 where I will present more data on fresher coffees, and track changes as they age.

Low-acid Coffee and Acid Reflux

I have no doubt that people experience stomach issues from coffee, but I strongly doubt it has anything to do with the acidity. In addition to my list above, here's a list of pH values for common foods from the FDA. If you think coffee is bad, you probably also can't eat almost any fruits, tomato sauce, or napoleons and eclairs. More importantly, the difference in pH between very acidic and very flat coffees is probably not significant enough to cause or prevent stomach issues. So if you have been, or are considering switching to a low-acid coffee, I recommend you think twice. It's more widely accepted that the caffeine in coffee is what causes irritation because it stimulates the release of more stomach acid. It's an easy theory to test, try a caffeine pill, a red-bull, or 5-hour energy. Tea and soda also have caffeine, but in lower doses.

Coffee Flavor

The reason I'm so opposed to blaming heartburn issues on pH is because acidity brings with it a ton of interesting fruit flavor and complexity. Have you ever had a cup of coffee that's naturally sweet and tastes like blueberries without any weird additives? If not, then you're missing out. Subscribers to Angels' Cup get to blindly sample up to 208 different coffees per year! Insane variety and blind tasting are the only way to learn how different origins taste.

Want to try more coffee?

Angels' Cup is an online coffee tasting club where subscribers get to blindly sample up to 208 different coffees per year, from over 100 top 3rd wave roasters. Small samples sizes mean you get to sample more coffees for less money. Tasting flights start at only $8.99!

Join Angels' Cup Today!

We recently added a feature to the Angels' Cup coffee app that lets you record brew methods AND the results.

If you're familiar with brew methods like the Chemex or Aeropress, recording the brew method is straight forward. As you can see in the screenshot to the left, you can record things like temp, grind, brew time, coffee, and water weight. When you have a coffee and water weight entered, the app shows you your brew ratio. There are a few apps out there that let you record brew data, but if you really want to learn how to make better coffee, you should also keep track of the results. To help you do this, we built a 2-axis chart to record your coffee's strength and extraction. Coffee strength is easy to discern. It either tastes too watery or not watery enough. If your coffee is ever too strong, you can solve the problem by adding a little water to it! Extraction is a little more challenging, and might take some practice to understand. Coffee people usually refer to extraction in terms of sour and bitter.

Sour

If coffee is under extracted it will taste sour because the fruity acidity comes out first. Think about the tart flavor of citrus fruit, or granny smith apples. Those flavors come from acidic compounds found naturally in fruit, and often can be quite pleasant. Candy is often loaded with the same types of acidic compounds, think about Jolly Ranchers or Starbursts. However, for these sour notes to taste good in a cup of coffee, they need to be balanced with the sweetness and even some bitter notes that develop later in the brewing process.

Bitter

If coffee is over extracted, it will taste bitter. Think about the flavor of really dark chocolate, garlic, or medicine. The bitterness in coffee takes longer to develop than sour or sweet notes, but can quickly come to overpower a cup. Here's a quick table to help you fix bad coffee: Flavor, Brew Time, Water Temp, Grind Sour, Increase, Decrease, Finer Bitter, Decrease, Hotter, Coarser It's easy to read about how something tastes, but how easy is it to pick up on in the cup? Understanding extraction, and training yourself to pick up on sour vs bitter, can be a challenge, but a fun one! The best way to really understand coffee is to deliberately brew multiple cups incorrectly, and try them side by side.

Experiment 1: Extraction through brew time

An easy way to mess up extraction is brew time. For this experiment, you will need a "submersion" brewer, one where the coffee grounds are suspended in water with no drainage (i.e. aeropress, french press, clever). A V60 can also work because the filters are thin enough to brew super fast if you want, but a Kalita or Chemex are bad options. You'll also need good coffee beans with at least medium acidity. You're going to make three cups. For one, just follow your normal recipe. For another, cut your recipe time in half, and for another double your recipe. For most people, that will probably mean a 2-minute brew, a 4-minute brew, and an 8-minute brew. When they're ready to try them side-by-side, what do you notice? I like to think of it as treble and bass. The under extracted coffee will have all treble and no bass. The over extracted coffee will have the bass dialed up. What if the experiment didn't work for you? Either a) your beans weren't very good or were stale, and didn't have treble or bass to begin with, or b) it just takes time to develop a palate, try again with 1, 4, and 12-minute brew times.

Experiment 2: Extraction through brew temp

This one is tricky, so buckle up. First, you need a variable temp electric kettle or a kettle with a thermometer. If you have that, make three cups of coffee, the first one at 210℉, the second at 195℉, and the third at 180℉. What you'll probably notice is that temperature affects the sour/treble notes, significantly more than the bitter/bass notes. Now here's where it gets tricky. Temperature doesn't simply increase or decrease extraction, it affects the rate at which specific compounds dissolve, namely acids and carbohydrates. The hotter the water, the more acidity and sweetness you will get, keeping all else equal. However, you will also taste a shift in the nuance of the acidity and sweetness, and this shift will be different for every damn coffee. Brewing a sweet coffee at lower temps seems to produce a beautiful candy-like sweetness. At higher temps we seem to get more of a starchy, bread-like sweetness. This might be acceptable if it's the only sweetness a coffee offers, or if the coffee needs sweetness to balance some bitterness or sourness. The basic rule of thumb I'll offer is this. For sour coffee, decrease temp. Yes that will reduce extraction, but think about cold brew as an extreme example. It's never too bright. If your coffee is bitter, increase temp. It won't pull out more bitterness, but it might pull out more acidity and/or sweetness to balance the bitter. And that's the basis of 'dialing in' a coffee recipe! You start with strength, and then adjust brew time and temp to get the perfect balance of treble and bass for a given coffee. Hope that helps, and addresses some of the comments below. :)

Experiment 3: Extraction through grind size

This is actually the hardest variable to experiment with. On something like a French Press, grind options are limited by what will pass through the filter. For filter brewing, changing the grind size will greatly affect your brew time. The finer you grind, the slower your brew time will be. That being said, one of the best tricks to making great coffee is to figure out exactly how fine a specific method needs to be. Go very fine, see if the coffee comes out bitter, then re-try with coarser coffee and a shorter brew time. At the end of the day, reading will only get you so far, you have to be willing to experiment. Don't think of it as a waste of beans. Gulping coffee without paying attention to flavor is a waste, experimentation is the best possible use of good beans. So set aside some time this weekend to have fun with your coffee!

Want to try more coffee?

Angels' Cup is an online coffee tasting club where subscribers get to blindly sample up to 208 different coffees per year, from over 100 top 3rd wave roasters. Small samples sizes mean you get to sample more coffees for less money. Tasting flights start at only $8.99!

Join Angels' Cup Today!