A Taste of the Crickle Creek Advent Calendar

My husband and I have tried a number of advent calendars throughout the years. My first was a series of David’s Tea advent calendars, each of which featured 24 different loose leaf teas. When I started to find a lot of repeats in those, I switched to their matcha advent calendar. Though I did learn from that I’m not as big a fan of matcha as I am other teas.

In more recent years, we’ve also indulged in the Adventure Dice advent calendar. These, I think, were my favorites. It was always so fun to discover what sets we were going to end up with. And usually they chose dice sets that I would never have chosen for myself but still ended up loving.

There does come a moment, however, when you realize that four entire new sets of dice every year adds up quickly. Especially when I still buy extra sets separately. So I admit that we stopped buying advent calendars all together.

Last year, my in-laws purchased me a puzzle advent calendar, which was pretty fun. Each day contained roughly twenty-four or so pieces to assemble. And by Christmas Eve, the entire puzzle was finished. The pieces were even labeled on the back so that I could break them back down into their original boxes – just in case I ever want to use this advent calendar again. Pretty neat!

My husband, who is not a fan of puzzles, received a whiskey advent calendar the same year. This year, though, we received something I think was even neater – a coffee advent calendar! This contained 24 pouches of different types of coffee all prepared by the Crickle Creek Coffee Roasters (a Canadian coffee company).

How It Works

When I purchased my David’s Tea advent calendars, each day included a small pouch with the name of the tea and its ingredients printed onto it. (You could also cheat and look at the back of the box to find the list of teas and ingredients, though it didn’t tell you which days the teas would be presented.)

Crickle Creek’s coffee advent calendar came with 24 brightly colored pouches of coffee that did not contain labels. Instead each contained a QR code printed on the front. It also came with a little list card with space to write notes about each coffee and check boxes to record how much you like it.

When you scan the daily QR code, it takes you to a portion of Crickle Creek’s website which reveals the name of the coffee and includes information about both the taste and its cultivation. It starts with a simple rundown of what breed of coffee you’re drinking, what region it was grown in as well as the method by which it was prepared. Then it tells you what level of body and acidity to expect. Finally, it offers tasting notes for the blend – this is what you’ll actually experience when you drink it.

Most of the coffees also came with a small story about how the company acquired the coffee or has continued to cultivate it. Some of these small stories included the history of a region’s particular coffee or details about how the local growers sell it. One of the coffees, for example, is only sold at auction, it can’t be bought directly from the individual farmers. Another of the blends comes from Yemin, where coffee cultivation originated but also is very difficult. And that day’s blend contained some interesting historical information.

What I Got From It

First, before I talk about this advent calendar tasted, I want to say that I learned a lot from the information provided on each of the daily listing. For example, I had no idea that there were several different methods of coffee preparation, and that each affects the taste. Some coffees are processed by being left in the sun, others are processed via machine. Still more coffees use a combination of both methods.

I also did not know that coffee prefers to be grown in the shade. Or that in many places, coffee is grown on very small acreage lots. The information provided by this advent calendar also indicated that the altitude at which a coffee is grown can have an effect on its overall flavor.

In many of the places where these coffees are grown, a large number of farmers work on small lots. So the information provided by Crickle Creek also included details about collectives that help these independent farmers access the global market. In some cases, the collective provides the means by which the coffee is processed. In other cases these collectives build the infrastructure that allows the coffee farmers to continue to grow and flourish.

Coffee cultivation, it turns out, takes a village.

The second most interesting thing I learned from this advent calendar is that there’s a much wider range of flavor profiles for coffee than I ever realized. I expected a lot of cocoa, toffee and nut flavors. I wasn’t particularly surprised when caramel, butter and nougat popped up. There were even a few just labeled as ‘creamy.’

There were lots of flavors I didn’t expect to encounter – like grape. And while I wasn’t surprised to see citrus, I was shocked to find peach, passion fruit and plum. One even tasted like pineapple!

How the Coffee Tasted

One thing I should mention is that none of the flavors listed above were added to the coffees. All of these flavors were produced as a natural part of the growing and preparation of the coffee. Which I find mind-boggling. Maybe my coffee buying habits have limited the flavor profiles I’ve encountered. Or maybe I just need to look at more small batch coffee roasters. But there were a lot of surprises waiting for me in those little packets.

One of the most surprising flavors for me was the grape. These ended up having a rich, earthy flavor that reminded me of red wine. And while I’m not often a red wine drinker, I did like the depth the grape flavor added to the coffee.

I think our joint favorites ended up being the richer, fuller bodied coffee flavors. These were the ones that tended to have natural nutty, chocolate and caramel flavors in their profile. The fruitier flavored coffees tended to be lighter and a little more acidic – which didn’t bother us. But both my husband and I tend to like darker roasts these days.

There were a few coffees that shocked us. One of the coffees lists ‘leafy greens’ as part of its flavor profile. And probably the most interesting one of all was snow pea! But while these were surprising flavors to find in our coffee cup (the leafy greens coffee tasted almost like a protein shake), I can safely say that none of the coffees were bad. We enjoyed each and every one of them. There were even a few I’d like to acquire larger batches of.

Overall, this turned out to be one of my all time favorite advent calendars because it gave me an education along with the experience!