I tried a R350 cup of coffee – it was like nothing I had ever tasted before

Jasmine, lemongrass, apricot, and litchi. These are the cupping notes expected of a R350 cup of coffee from one of the world’s best coffee producers.

The Zeo Sublimation Dried Geisha from Diego Bermudez is meant to taste like nothing you have ever had before.

Incomparable to any other coffee, it is almost tea-like in appearance and extremely light, with none of the acidity and bitterness of a traditional brew.

Offered to South Africans through Father Coffee, it costs R350 a cup to taste, and a tiny 48-gram jar will set you back R500.

Father Coffee has been bringing speciality coffees to South Africa since 2013, offering connoisseurs and caffeine junkies access to some of the world’s most unique blends, beans, and brewing methods.

Based in Johannesburg, with stores in Kramerville and Rosebank, the company says it seeks out coffees that are “exemplars of provenance, varietal, and processing”.

While this sounds pretentious, Father Coffee also offers mere mortals the traditional flat white, cappuccino, americano, and iced latte with its Heirloom Blend.

For more adventurous coffee fanatics, the company releases around 60 speciality coffees each year, which can be brewed in its cafés or wholesaled to be enjoyed at home.

Father Coffee cycles through these speciality coffees on its menus, with around eight offered at a time. It also has exclusive batch brews during the week, which can be tried at its Kramerville café.

That is exactly where we headed to taste Bermudez’s creation, almost purely because it is the most expensive coffee on offer, and to find out what made it so special.

Father Coffee’s Kramerville café is located amid warehouses and vehicle repair shops in an industrial area just outside of the Sandton CBD.

This makes it perfect for the dual function of a café and a mini-warehouse, with customers sitting in the front while online orders are fulfilled at the back alongside fresh bean deliveries and roasting.

The café also doubles as the Winebar at night, where clientele can try some of South Africa’s famous and unique wines.

Father Coffee is also renowned for its pastries, with Swedish buns, doughnuts, pain au chocolats, and sourdough offered in a display case on the coffee bar.

Customers can watch pastry chefs work on their craft in a lab towards the rear of the café, surrounded by booths. It was in the very last booth where we sat to taste a cup of coffee for R350.

The ordering

Once in the booth, we promptly ordered two flat whites to taste Father Coffee’s ‘standard’ Heirloom Blend in a format we enjoy most.

Anyone who has had Father Coffee will tell you that it is a life-changing experience that can turn you into a coffee snob overnight.

After my colleague’s life had been changed, we set about building up the courage to ask for the most expensive item on the menu and feel worthy of doing so.

Our request was met with incredulous shock from our otherwise pleasant waiter.

After a brief explanation as to why we wanted to taste this coffee and that we understood clearly the financial impact of our decision, we were quizzed on how we wanted it brewed.

“V60? Chemex? Aeropress? Batch Brew? Or espresso? Don’t forget, it is R350,” the waiter rattled off at us.

Panicking as the designated coffee connoisseur for the day, I leapt at Chemex. Firstly, I knew what it was, and secondly, much more importantly, it would make more than one cup – we had to get bang for our 350 bucks.

After waiting for a few minutes, fresh panic set in as a barista walked up from behind the coffee bar to set up a tableside display of the brewing process. This was not like any Chemex I had ever seen.

The waiter informed us that the barista did not recommend the Chemex process as it would alter the taste of the coffee, accentuating bitterness and hiding the natural sweetness and floral notes of the bean.

And so we settled on the V60 brewing process. However, the barista then informed us that he would be brewing the coffee using the Japanese Origami technique, which is subtly different from a traditional V60.

Keeping up the connoisseur guise, I ordered some still water to cleanse my pallet from the flat white I had earlier and to give Bermudez’s coffee a fair shot at my unsophisticated pallet.

The tasting

As is customary with any tasting, we were told about why this particular coffee is so special and just why Diego Bermudez is referred to as the “Denzel Washington of coffee”.

Bermudez has been one of the best coffee farmers in the world for the past decade, growing beans at relatively high altitudes in his home country of Colombia.

This Geisha varietal that we would taste was grown at 1,930 meters above sea level in Cauca, Colombia.

The barista explained that Bermudez created this coffee almost out of spite after some of his other creations were heavily criticised for being fermented for long periods of time.

Bermudez created Zeo Sublimation Dried Geisha to stick it to the judges as almost a completely unfermented coffee.

He sought to bring the very essence of the coffee cherry to the cup with his Zeo drying process, which involves the use of zeolite, a natural mineral with high absorption capabilities.

This was combined with a vacuum environment to rapidly dry the coffee cherry and retain all of the fruit’s characteristics.

Once the scientific apparatus was set up for the Origami brewing process, the coffee was ground and smelled heavenly.

Before we got caught up in the smell alone, the barista whisked the coffee away from us and poured it into the conical filter at the top of the Origami stand to begin the brewing process.

Warm water was poured onto the coffee 50 grams at a time at 30-second intervals.

The barista explained that it would drip onto a frozen metal ball that would ensure all acidity and bitterness were removed to leave the sweet, floral notes that Bermudez intended.

What dripped into the glass beaker at the bottom was slightly underwhelming. Almost tea-like, the coffee did not look strong at all and appeared watery.

However, the amazing smell remained as the coffee was poured out into award-winning wine glasses that were specifically designed to open up the flavours of any liquid beverage.

Left with just over a mouthful of coffee each, I braced myself for any disappointment. Promises of round sweetness with notes of jasmine, lemongrass, apricot, and litchi were made.

It was unlike any coffee I had ever tasted. It was incomparable, not because it was blindingly good but more so because it was just so different to any other experience I have had with coffee.

The coffee almost melted away on my tongue. There was no bitterness at all. However, there were also no notes of jasmine, lemongrass, apricot, or litchi.

Channeling my inner James Hoffmann, I declared that the coffee was very good, but not R350-a-cup good.

Video of our visit to Father Coffee

Father Coffee images