Review: Ceremony Coffee Roasters Thesis Blend (Annapolis, Maryland)

I’ve had the pleasure of trying coffee from Ceremony Coffee Roasters before; in addition to their single-origins, they offer blends with nerdy names, and I had made a mental note that someday, I wanted to try their Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis blends. The packaging makes it appear that the Thesis is light, Antithesis is dark, and Synthesis is medium, but from tasting all three, I think the roast levels are closer than the packaging indicates. This review will focus on the Thesis blend.

I meant to take a picture of the Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis blends side-by-side to compare roast levels, but I forgot to do this before I ran out of the Synthesis beans so I just have a pic of the Thesis and Antithesis blends together. As you can see from the photo, the Antithesis blend is on the darker side, but there’s not quite as much of a difference between the roast levels as the labeling might suggest.

Whole bean: Roasted to the lighter side of medium.

French press: Very sweet in the cup, tastes strongly of milk chocolate.

Clever Dripper: If the French press cup had the mouthfeel of whole milk, this cup was more like skimmed milk. Less richness but still a pleasure to drink.

Chemex: I ground the beans finer than I intended so the total brew time was 5:30 – much longer than the 4:00 I usually aim for. Still, this produced a drinkable cup; semi-sweet chocolate, light body, almost bordering on bland compared to the immersion cups, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Got sweeter as it cooled.

Hario V60: This cup had a bit more flavor than the Chemex cup.

Summary: I enjoyed these beans most in the French press; they didn’t produce a bad cup in any method but I feel like if you’re gonna buy this blend, you’re probably going to want the maximum amount of sweetness and richness that it can provide. The French press method shows off this blend to its best potential, in my opinion.

From the roaster: cookie dough, brown sugar, sweet

Ceremony Coffee Roasters Thesis Blend

Review conducted 15 days post-roast.

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