With the new version of the configurator—the exclusive “equalizer” that lets you create your ideal coffee—you can now choose not only the taste, but also the perfect aromas for your cup. Since its launch in 2015, there have been plenty of innovations introduced by caffelab.it. The website, owned by the historic Mokaflor roastery and also released in its .com version for the international market, was—and still is—truly one step ahead of other coffee-focused e-commerce platforms. An extremely broad selection of top-level specialty coffees, scoring above 90 points, but also many options of coffee blends of high quality that are not necessarily tied to very high prices; a wide range of more traditional blends, and a quantity of “tools” that make CaffèLAB a true “Amazon” of coffee.
One of the new features launched by CaffèLAB that immediately became a success was the configurator: a real program that allowed you to build your ideal coffee. Those who used it had several high-level single-origin coffees available; by selecting them and increasing or decreasing their percentage in the blend, they could “build” their own ideal sensory profile in sweetness, acidity, body, and aromatic intensity.
With the configurator, it was also possible to personalize your blend with a custom label and your own message, perhaps dedicated to the person who, in the morning, would sip that cup. Romantic? Not only—also professional. From the very beginning, the configurator was highly appreciated by many coffee shops as well: they could “set” the ideal blend for their customers and even customize it with their logo.
The new configurator for personalized coffee: taste and aroma
And yet, despite the success of the configurator for creating personalized coffee—which over the years has led to thousands (over 12,000) of recipes created by customers—the CaffèLAB team, with Bianca, Eleonora, and “coffee experts” Simone Celli and Robert Brink, realized they wanted to offer more: that version of the configurator was not enough to convey the philosophy of high-quality coffee that defines CaffèLAB.
That is how, taking the opportunity of a complete website redesign, they completely rethought not only the configurator, but even the very philosophy on which the project was founded.
As coffee enthusiasts know, mindful coffee tasting can be divided into three parts: tastes (flavors in the sense of basic tastes)—mainly sweetness, acidity, and bitterness, which are perfect when balanced—then body, and finally aromas, which can also be defined as flavour (even if the concept is slightly different), and which can range from the fruity notes of coffees from the Bourbon branch to the floral notes of Typica.
Well then: with the new configurator, online these days, it will be possible not only to choose—as before—just “taste,” meaning flavor balance and body, but also and above all the flavor notes, the aromatic notes, which are fundamental when talking about specialty coffee.
With the new configurator, you’ll be able to give your blend aromas that range from intense notes of chocolate cookie and hazelnut to delicate specialty aromatics that recall blackberry or Earl Grey tea. Aromatic notes, of course, are impossible to find in a “supermarket” coffee.
But how do you build your ideal blend?
Starting from the configurator, you choose the extraction method you prefer for your coffee (moka, espresso, filter…) and then begin selecting the taste and aromas you’ll love to find in your cup. Coffee, after all, is the pleasure of discovery.