Advent calendars have been a thing since forever, and coffee is no exception! Who doesn’t enjoy the opportunity of making the December season a bit more special to further highlight the festive atmosphere, since otherwise it’s cold and all. And starting every day of the month until Christmas with a new surprise coffee is certainly exciting. To my fellow popular neuroscience fans out there - ha-ha, dopamine stacking!.

For this year, I’ve chosen to go with the calendar sold by Nagare Coffee - a great Japanese style little cafe in the City of London which opened earlier this year and immediately became popular amongst London coffee snobs and beyond. For the 2023 advent calendar, they had a collaboration with the Taiwanese speciality roaster called Coffee Stopover.

Here’s my experience with them, and a few general thoughts. Also, Happy New Year!

Nagare Coffee + Coffee Stopover Advent Calendar 2023

Table of Contents

Unboxing and Information

This particular calendar came in a large box, and inside there were 24 sachets of different coffees, 20g each. As you can see from the card, the days were divided into sections by the processing methods. Each coffee has an icon describing the roast level, and the other side of the information card has details about the origin, variety, processing, and altitude. This is by far the most amount of detail I’ve ever seen on a coffee advent calendar, and it’s awesome.

Origins

An obvious benefit of the coffee advent calendars is how many new coffees you can explore in a short amount of time. Amongst 24 coffees, there were 14 different countries of origin, with different unique producers within each country. Here, I don’t think I’ve ever tried coffees from Uganda before, and to my shame I didn’t even know that Sumatra (an island in Indonesia) was also a coffee producer. The Panama Geisha (Anaerobic, but super clean tasting) on the 24th was a beautiful touch of fanciness.

Processing

The days were divided into sections by processing: natural, honey, washed, and anaerobic (for the last 3 days). And the variety was great - there were very clean and classic washed coffees, and there were insane funky ones which immediately filled up the room with their overwhelming smell. Even though I normally prefer cleaner coffees, I still occasionally enjoy a guilty pleasure of a wild beverage, and this is exactly what I wanted from this.

Roast Level and Taste

As I mentioned, the card honestly stated the roast levels for each coffee, and I think they were quite accurate. For filter brewing I’ve mostly used Pulsar, with an occasional Orea v3 and Aeropress. Decent espresso machine for espresso.

Very Light and Light

There were plenty of light and very light ones, and I’d say this was also a pleasant surprise: they were actually very light and delicate - raising my expectations for the future advent calendars by quite a bit.

Brewing them either with Pulsar or Orea, or making espressos were a (de)light - not only they did not contain any burnt taste notes at all, but many of them were fantastic. For example, a washed Kenyan coffee was absolutely up to the high standard I have for this origin as it’s one of my most favourite ones, and had a lot of this juicy blackcurrant and dried fruit y’all are looking for. Same goes for many other light ones.

I was also quite lucky with espressos (since you get only one attempt), and further improved my luck by using a fairly forgiving Extractamundo Dos profile on my Decent - which I usually use anyway.

Medium-Light and Medium

There were quite a few medium ones, and I found them to be quite good for “classic style” espressos and especially milky drinks which my wife loves. Still not bitter nor burnt, but leaning to the chocolatey or caramel side. I’ve used either Extractamundo Dos, or Londinium, or even Default profile on the Decent, and all were fine. Got a bit less lucky with the grind size maybe once, but it tasted fine with milk anyway.

Medium-Dark and Dark

This one is probably the most controversial. There were quite a few of medium-dark and dark ones. To repeat a disclaimer I seem to be posting every time as if otherwise I’m going to get arrested by the moral police or something - personally I’m not a fan, but I understand that many people might not be on a same snobbery level as me and it’s perfectly fine to enjoy dark roasts. However, a couple of sachets had beans so dark (and they were accurately marked as such) that I’ve decided to use my old Niche Zero for them and not my P100 just in case.

What I found to be really cool though, is that even with the darker roasted beans there was one sachet of heavily processed ones (I believe №18, Colombia Honey process) and the intensity of the smell were absolutely shocking to me, given the darker roast level. I’ve never seen a funky dark roast before, and the way it cut through a huge cup of milk (after it filled up the whole room with its intense smell) was insane. This is something I will probably explore further, as I like spicing up the milky drinks with fruity funk. So still a good new experience!

Suggestion for the Future

I feel it would be very useful for the roasters to let the customer choose the roast level present in the advent calendar, or at least limit the darkest one. I can see the benefit of exploring the roasts darker than I usually drink, but given that 24 surprise coffees is already a lot of things which are outside of my control, it would be nice to at least be able to have some predictability for the boring old dude I am. I suppose same might be true in reverse - for the people who prefer darker roasts and don’t want to have very light ones.

Additionally, I know I would love to see tasting notes for the coffees. We’re only going to taste it once, after all!

General Thoughts

Overall, I’m very happy about buying Stopover+Nagare coffee advent calendar, and would like to thank them again for this wonderful experience!

Here’s some thoughts about coffee advent calendars in general which you might consider if you’re looking to buy one for the next year.

Timing

First of all, depending on your coffee drinking habits and especially taking into account holiday plans, you might not be able to finish all of it. And you probably also have other coffees already, and they won’t be getting any younger.

Additionally, even if you are fine with finishing it, there’s quite some time that passes between the roast date and the later days of December that you drink it, and unless it’s a certain roaster known for 90 days resting the coffee might get stale anyway - especially the darker roasts. In this case I can’t say that it happened though, and the last light roasted sachets felt like what I’d expect to be close to a peak rest.

One thing I would probably do for the next year is to immediately freeze the coffee as it arrives: it’s already vacuum sealed into individual doses anyway.

Doses and Dialing In

With single dose sachets, an obvious drawback is that you have only one attempt at brewing the coffees, so you can’t dial them in - which comes as a problem particularly with espresso, even though I was lucky this year. Even with filter, you can’t really experiment if that’s your thing, or do a separate cupping, and so on.

I’ve heard that some roasters make 12 doses of 50g so you get a bit more room, but it kinda loses the true advent calendar feel in my opinion.

Even with 20g doses, I’ve usually had a 2-5g leftover, which I put into what I call a Stopover Leftover canister. And yes, I totally brewed a crazy blended brew afterwards, and I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done.

Choosing a Roaster

This is a tricky one, and I wonder what other people think about this. In 2023, it felt to me like the record number of speciality coffee roasters were making their advent calendars. I have no data to support this, but it really felt like an exponential growth since the last couple years, or maybe I was just exposed to it a bit more. Anyway, I’m sure there will be much more of them to come in 2024. And you only get one chance.

A few years ago I didn’t know about advent calendars made by the top roasters, so I picked an unknown one which seemed like the best one available, and I did not like it. So I’d definitely go with a reputable roaster (like I have this year), luckily there are so many of them nowadays!

Control and Clarity

Surprise-surprise! The lack of control is pretty much the point of the surprise. You might love what you’ll get, or you might not. As I mentioned, it would be nice to have some clarity on the expected roast levels, and maybe on the general kind of coffees to expect.

In the end, I think it’s a great opportunity to give your snobbery a rest, and just enjoy the little things. It’s Christmas, after all!

Bonus: Mega Leftover Blend

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve put all of the leftovers in a Stopover Leftover jar. In total there was 48g which makes for two pour-overs and one espresso. I’ve already done one pour-over, and it was… complex. I’ll share a video on my instagram soon!





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