Spicy cinnamon and chocolate
Amount of grounds:
2 tablespoons per 10 oz of water
Brewing time:
8.5 minutes
Additions:
None
Reusing grounds:
Not tested
Using grounds in food:
Not tested
General Thoughts:
General feeling about the roast
There isn't really a lot to say here. The caramel is my favorite of the flavored roasts, and the side-by-side didn't change that.
The battle of the cinnamons! Well, not much of a battle, but more like a tickle fight. Neither one has much of a chocolate flavor to it, and with both of them having cinnamon, it just about boils down to how the spice of the cayenne, or lack thereof, affects the overall flavor.
In the plain cinnamon version, the actual cinnamon flavor is a bit stronger. It's a little closer in quality to the cinnamon flavor found in baked goods (the "warm and sweet" variety) and it stands out quite a bit in this test. The Maya, on the other hand, the cinnamon flavor is a bit more muted and the spice of the cayenne seems quite strong in the flavor. In the aroma, it gives a hint closer to that of cinnamon candy or gum. But before that spiciness kicks in, there is a brief moment in the flavor where it comes across as quite similar to the plain cinnamon version with that "softer" version of the flavor. Between the two, I prefer the Maya overall, although in this particular side-by-side, it just kind of makes me fell "meh" about both.
There isn't really a lot to say here. Spicy chocolate is spicy, chocolatey chocolate is chocolatey, and I prefer chocolatey over spicy.
When I first sipped from the Maya and then from the hazelnut, I was surprised that my knee-jerk reaction was that I liked the Maya better. But all of that changed when I went back to the Maya. "False alarm!" :-D I think what happened was that because of the cayenne in the Maya, my mouth was still feeling a little spicy from it when I sipped the hazelnut, and my brain didn't know what to make of spicy hazelnut. I do prefer the hazelnut, but there needs to be a little bit of time in between sips to make sure that there's not too much cross contamination.
I think I've said before that I think the Maya is something that I have to be in the mood for, and I have a feeling that's going to be coloring a number of my comparisons with it. At the same time, if I have to be in the mood for it, it means that I don't necessarily love it, and therefore it should wind up farther down the list.
I think this is one of those instances. I'm just not feeling the spicy cinnamon flavor today, and by comparison, I'm liking the maple way more because it's fitting in much better with my mood. I'm just glad that the Maya is better than the regular cinnamon flavored roast.
I didn't have quite the full amount left for the mocha this morning, so I'm probably missing about 1 or 1.5 teaspoons of grounds. As a result, the cigarette smoke flavor is less pronounced today, but it also tastes a little weaker and thinner overall. I'm glad that this is the end of it.
Maya's nice spicy cinnamon flavor comes out quite a bit better than the mocha anyway. I am noticing, though, that there really isn't much chocolate flavor to the Maya because the cinnamon and cayenne overpower it.
I feel like this pairing is what the original peppermint vs cinnamon side-by-side should have been. Both of these are decent overall, and I really like them almost the same. It's a really close race. The peppermint has more chocolate flavor to it than the Maya, but the spiciness of the cayenne in the Maya brings out the cinnamon flavor nicely. In the end, I think if I were to be drinking either of these long term, I'd probably go with the peppermint by a hair since I feel like I would just need to be in a particular mood to drink the Maya when not doing side-by-sides.
I think at this point I'm just trying to use up the rest of the Pumpkin Spice so I don't just have to throw it away. The spicier and sweeter Maya is much better than the pumpkin spice, and I don't expect any future side-by-sides with pumpkin spice to do any better.
Taking a sniff of the brews as they cool, the Maya has more of a spicy scent to it than the regular cinnamon flavor did. In tasting it, I certainly don't taste any cayenne, but there is a twinge of spice to it that makes it feel a little more like a cinnamon candy, like a "red hot" or a piece of cinnamon gum. There is an interesting latent heat left on my tongue that shows up a few seconds after the sip is gone. This one is more like what I expected the regular cinnamon flavored roast to be like. In fact, it builds a little as I work my way through the cup, getting stronger and persisting longer towards the end. That's a good thing, because after the cinnamon roast, I was worried I had made a mistake getting the larger bag of Maya even though it was the smallest one available.
The vanilla one is still very "Vanilla Chex" like. It's good and I enjoy it, but there's not much cocoa flavor to be had.
Both of these are good, but I feel like they both very much fall in the "I have to be in the mood for it" arena depending on how my taste buds are feeling that day. It's a tough one to call, but I think I like the vanilla one just a little better overall just because it leans a little sweeter than the Maya.