The first ever Caffeine Crawl in Canada and the 5th crawl in North America was held yesterday. Caffeine lovers spent a fun day in Vancouver visiting six artisan coffee and chocolate shops and the weather even cooperated! It was a beautiful day!

The crawl started at 10am at Salt Spring Coffee at 4295 Main Street. There were a few fellow crawlers already there when I arrived. Some crawlers came from out of town from Seattle and Texas just to attend this crawl in Vancouver! Each crawler were given a goodie bag that contained a bag of Salt Spring Coffee, a bottle of water (to remind us to keep hydrated), and a Barista Magazine.




We were told each stop will have an unique presentation prepared for us. Salt Spring Coffee made us a Orange Spice Mocha. Yummy mocha with a kick. Delicious! Just the drink to start the day off with!

 
Our second stop was Momento Coffeehouse located at 2766 West 4th Avenue.



Rick, the owner of the coffee house, brought in some pastries for us to go with the coffee. Don't drink coffee on an empty stomach!

 He showed us how to prepare pour over coffee using Salt Spring coffee.


 The result was a coffee that has fruity taste.


 Third stop was the chocolate shop, Xoxolat at 2391 Burrard Street.


 Look at these cool chocolate stilettos!

Mmmm! Look at all these chocolates! Every kind you can imagine! There's even a bacon chocolate!


 We were given chocolate samples and drinkable chocolate to taste.

 Blood and cherry chocolate! I also tried a lime and tortilla chip chocolate. So good!

We tried two drinkable chocolates: Milk chocolate with orange (which I LOVED) and Dark chocolate with chili.

Next stop was Prado Cafe on the Drive (1938 Commercial Drive).



Sammy Piccolo the owner of Prado is a world champion barista!

He prepared an iced coffee for us - coffee that was brew over ice (coffee was dripped onto the ice).



The next two places were downtown and as we were walking to them, we passed by Medina Cafe which was not part of the crawl but had a sign that fit the theme of the day! =)

Salty Tongue Cafe located at 213 Carrall Street in Gastown, next to The Irish Heather was our second to last stop in the crawl and we were treated to a long but interesting presentation that comprised of three parts.





First we did a coffee cupping which is a coffee tasting to evaluate coffee on taste, flavor, fragrance, and aroma. The practice involves sniffing the coffee, taking a spoonful then slurping the coffee loudly! LOL The coffees we tasted were from Costa Rica, Columbia and Ethiopia. They went from mild to bold flavours. I couldn't really tell them apart except for the bolder flavours.

Mike from Seattle Stumptown Coffee showed us the proper way of slurping coffee. The cup is for spitting out the coffee if you want.


 Next was a pour over coffee tasting. They ground the beans and prepared the coffee right in front of us.



The third station was a beer tasting! Coffee beer that is!

Brad from R&B Brewery explained how a coffee beer was made. The beer was swished back and forth through a tube of coffee beans I think.




I'm not a beer drinker so I can't really evaluate how it tastes compared to other beer. It is very carbonated and has the coffee colour but I'm not sure if I can taste the coffee flavour? Brad said that this beer was very boring until they added the coffee so I'll have to take his word for it. =)

 The last stop on the Caffeine Crawl was the Caffé Artigiano located at 740 West Hastings.








The two coffees we tried were La Marianela from Colombia (pour over coffee) and Murago from Burundi (French press).

 After the coffee tasting, we were given a Latte art demonstration by Darko.




Very cool.

I enjoyed the Caffeine Crawl very much though I was feeling the effects of caffeine overdose long after the crawl ended! I learned a lot about coffee and made some new friends!


Disclaimer: I had won a contest from Salt Spring Coffee to attend this concert. I was not expected to write anything and the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own and have not been influenced in any other way.