Forget the cold weather, we have a new Colombian filter to put some sunshine in your cup! The La Serrania comes from the municipality of Palestina just south of the town Pitalito in the Huila region of Colombia. Interestingly, the name of this coffee is not the farm name nor a washing station name. It is the name given to a selection of different coffee which met a certain quality criteria established by Virmax. While this coffee was selected initially as the primary component for our Red Brick Espresso blend, we have been trying to profile it for filter and have had great results! It has retained most of the flavour notes of the espresso with lovely ripe peach and vanilla notes, a brown sugary sweetness, lovely raspberry acidity and a silky mouthfeel. Available now in the webshop here

And they’re off…………….. Time for a guest blend again, this time inspired by the Grand National. Its cool that you can win the cost back at odds of 13 to 1 chance This is the fourth in a new “stable” of guest coffee blends we will be introducing in 2013. Each month there will be [...]

I know there are all sorts of conversations swirling around restaurant coffee kicked off by Oliver Strand and then intensified/exacerbated by Kevin Knox . I don’t really want to dive into that particular discussion head on, instead hoping to run parallel to this. I try not to post too much about the specific experiences I have in my working life on here, because this isn’t really a blog about my business. I must confess, however, that after nearly 5 years of wholesale coffee roasting and working with businesses across London and the UK I feel no closer to “solving” the restaurant coffee problem. As an industry we’re pretty resentful of how restaurants treat coffee. I still cringe at the memory of the NBC audience ganging up to pick on someone from a restaurant who dared to think they weren’t doing that bad of a job. Let’s look at this from a difficult angle, perhaps one that isn’t our own. Coffee isn’t important to restaurants. It doesn’t have a great cash margin, and there are other items that might be ordered. A brandy makes more money, has near zero wastage and my staff training is pretty minimal. Restaurants treat coffee that way because it simply isn’t important to them. People are booking tables because of the coffee service. The fact that, on the one hand, the coffee industry often complains that restaurants don’t take a culinary approach to coffee while, on the other hand, we’re slinging out our best tasting products in paper cups… Restaurants serve coffee because they are expected to. “Get rid of espresso!” we tell them. In the USA this may actually be viable but in cultures where espresso was used to make coffee expensive and desirable that is more difficult. I once got incredibly excited because a restaurant here got rid of espresso. They did french presses. The staff trainings were incredibly enjoyable because it was just tasting and conversation. The presentation was beautiful and the coffee tasty. For their customers, who visited relatively rarely, this was an oddity in a dining world that still proclaimed espresso to be the best. The restaurant eventually felt that the risk reward ratio wasn’t working and added espresso back to it menu. I don’t blame them at all. This restaurant had previously recognised that espresso was really hard. Staff training for a restaurant poses a challenge. Consistency is difficult. Execution is hard. Even businesses who basically just work with coffee struggle to execute consistently to a high standard, and yet we’re incredulous that a restaurant – that deals with so many ingredients and preparations – might struggle to brew a good cup. This is where Nespresso comes in. They turn up, and they understand that espresso brewing is difficult. The difference is they come with a solution. We might argue that the product quality isn’t there, but it is still a better solution than one we have. So we continue to berate the restaurant industry. We mock them for taking free equipment, instead of laying down thousands upon thousands to brew a relatively small number of low margin products. We mock them for doing a bad job with a setup that most of us already struggle on. We continue to offer the same solution to their problem, despite the fact that all and sundry can see that this solution doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t work. No matter what we do most espresso in most restaurants brewed on traditional equipment will have quality issues. How much work have we done on looking at a solution that bridges some of the challenges around ease, while retaining the characteristics of the coffees we are so excited about? None. Perhaps we ought to start… Related posts: Restaurant Coffee I don’t usually post much work related stuff on here, but taking this photo it struck how ludicrously easy it can be to do a great coffee service in a... I’m not in it for the money You hear this a lot among passionate people who start businesses, particularly coffee ones. For many of us coffee is compelling, fascinating, satisfying yet frustrating in equal measure. It is... Trust This is the first in a series of posts on quite a broad topic within coffee, that covers not only elements of brewing but sales, consumption, successes and failures and...

Lovely mention from Ibby Tarafdar (with latte art pours courtesy of Kasparas): http://ibbytarafdar.co.uk/stores.html Keep up to date with this year’s UKBC: http://scaeuk.com/news/ https://twitter.com/ukcoffeeevents Currently available, and coming up, at the cafe: Brazilian SOE’s: Sertao pulp, and Passeio Topiazo varietal natural, and the latest seasonal versions of Caffe Naturelle and Formula 6 blends from JGC. We have New Rwanda Koakaka Coop and Bolivian Manco Kapac Colonia from Caranavi for cafetière …or for your filter methods at home! New Guest espresso roasters also approaching in the near future..!

We’re currently looking for someone to join the team. The role we’re looking to fill is that of our delivery driver/production assistant. It is full time, from Monday to Friday here at the roastery. There is more information about the job here . If you’re interested then we’d love to hear from you!

We will be closed on Good Friday (29th) and Easter Monday (1st) This means that all orders placed in the webshop after midnight Wednesday (28th) won’t go out until Tuesday (2nd) Please make sure you order accordingly so that you have plenty of coffee to go with your hot cross buns! Happy Easter!

Just back from a two-week cycling ‘holiday’ (expedition!) in Sri Lanka with my father in law. From the baking hot coast, through rice fields and jungle, then up over 2000 MASL along steep hairpin bends, to and around the central highlands, and back – by bike the whole way! Sri Lanka’s a really amazing place, especially if you take the time to get around and explore. But I won’t go into general details, as this is a coffee blog! In terms of coffee and tea, Sri Lanka is really all about the tea, and has been ever since the original coffee crops were abandoned due to serious cases of rust in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when tea was planted instead. They have never looked back. It’s the tea that Sri Lanka is known for, and which dominates the scenery of highlands, and I can’t really not give it a mention and a few pictures here. This scenery is stunningly beautiful. The tea estates shimmer and glisten like emerald-green blankets of gems, swathed across high mountains, softly undulating hills, steeply sloping valleys, and terraced gardens, interspersed with taller trees throughout (all reached by bicycle!). The imagery, and the particular colour, was like nothing I have seen before, and it will stay with me. And finding out a little about the tea (and its processing at a couple of factories) was interesting. Coffee is not the reason I went to Sri Lanka, and it is not what Sri Lanka specialises in, so it was never fair to expect too much. But, obviously, coffee is my passion, and when I found out I was going to a country that is geographically and climatically suitable for coffee growing, I was excited to try to find some growing in origin, and to taste some fresh cherries for the first time. Finding out any significant detail about coffee growing in Sri Lanka is very difficult! It is currently not really drunk, grown professionally, known about, or given any thought whatsoever by most of the country, I think. Research lead me to Hansa Coffee as seeming to be the only company obviously producing and roasting its own coffee on the island. From what I read, it seems their coffee comes from small farmers (probably growing coffee fairly casually in their gardens, rather than as part of more specialised or professional coffee farms), situated around the Kotmale area in the highlands, and with their Roastery (run by Lawrence) being situated in Nuwara Eliya. After finding this out, I contacted Hansa twice by email, and also via Twitter, asking if it might be possible to simply see some coffee growing in any of the farms, as I was touring these areas by bicycle. Unfortunately they never responded, and so I was not able to organise any visits to the farms growing their coffee, or find out any detail about their cultivation, harvesting, processing or roasting. Whilst I was actually in Nuwara Eliya (which, at 1900 MASL is the highest town in Sri Lanka!), I still searched around the streets for the roastery, but never found it. Whilst I was there, my wife (back at home) actually managed to get a response from Hansa about the roastery itself – but they said Lawrence was away for the week, so no visit was possible, and there was still no address, so I couldn’t even take a look at the roastery from outside..! But it was simply seeing (and tasting) some coffee growing (anywhere!) that was my main aim, rather than the roasting or drinking side of things in this case, and I didn’t let the lack of information discourage me! We set our route to take in Kotmale between Kandy and Nuwara Eliya, so that I could at least look out for coffee as we went along. Sure enough, on the day we traveled from Kandy (500 MASL), through Kotmale, and up to just above Ramboda (1000 MASL), coffee suddenly started to appear everywhere! I didn’t see any signs of specific or organised cultivation or production of coffee as a crop, but I soon recognised the odd plant or two growing here and there, wild along the roadside, and also in people’s gardens. Most of the plants I saw (some with cherries on as well as flowers) where tantalisingly just out of reach, and we had to keep pushing on, so it was photos only. Then, above Ramboda, we needed to stop for the night, and fortunately found a space at last, tiniest, guesthouse (luckily, as we discovered the next day there were no more for miles of steep climbing up to Nuwara Eliya!). I noticed they had one sole little coffee tree growing in their driveway, and enquired about it with the owner. He kindly and eagerly arched the top of the bush down, where there were a few ripe cherries, so that I could pick them to eat. Delicious! The flesh was juicy, sweet, and unique in flavour. Probably not as perfectly sweet and ripe and those grown skilfully on the best farms around the world, and almost certainly nothing special in terms of bean potential, I’m sure, but very tasty and exciting to try for the first time all the same. Mission accomplished! The small coffee tree, on the left. This was a doubly lucky find, as the next day, as we started travel up the next 1000 meters to Nuwara Eliya, the coffee plants disappeared rapidly, despite the suitability of the elevation, and the landscape became dominated almost exclusively by tea, and later also cool-climate vegetables higher up, along with even more tea! Coffee is really hard to come by in Sri Lanka, currently, not just the plants, but to drink, as well. Most places simply don’t serve it, and usually the only times we had it where in the various lovely guesthouses where we stayed, for breakfast. Even some of them didn’t have any, and almost without exception, the coffee was very, very odd indeed. A kind of hot composty/mouldy pond/ditch water or drains aroma and aftertaste, with a charcoal edge, that was drinkable only with milk. I’m not sure what substances or processes were deployed to prepare this. But I was missing coffee so much that it was still always welcome! I did then have a pretty nice Americano in IceBear cafe (a more modern, quirky, Swiss owned place serving coffee and tea in Negombo) when back on the coast. This was made with coffee advertised as being grown around Nuwara Eliya, via someone called Century for You. It was pleasant and tasty (simple chocolaty and dried fruit flavours), in comparison to most of the other coffees tried. I’m not sure what Hansa’s coffee is like in their own cafe, as this is situated in the main city Colombo, where we didn’t visit… But like I said, Sri Lanka’s all about the tea rather than coffee, so these findings where to be expected, I guess. I wasn’t really hoping or expecting to find really high quality beans, or great brewed coffee in any form anyway - my main coffee-goal of the trip was just to find some plants growing, and some fresh cherries to taste, which I achieved, and which was fantastic!!

Good luck Kasparas!! Plan cafe barista, and my current right-hand man, Kas, is set to compete in the UKBC regional heats for his first time soon, so very best of luck to him! He has been with us for a couple of years now, and has come a long way, becoming one of the ‘few’ who continue to develop their techniques, expertise, interest and knowledge above and beyond that which is simply ‘required’. In terms of the competition itself, I have not been coaching him, as such, just giving some tips and support along the way; my involvement has been minimal, which seemed healthy, and he has essentially done all the preparation off his own back. He was making progress before I went away, and I’m sure he has been practising in earnest whilst I’ve been on ‘expedition’ (!), so I am eager to see how the set is shaping up, and I know he will do a great job.

Another exciting coffee offering for everyone! This coffee is from La Buitrera farm which is owned by Albeiro Oritz Gomez in the Huila region of Colombia, we think this is a really lovely example of how exciting great Colombian coffees from Huila can taste. The coffee is delicate with a champagne-like sparkle. A lychee sweetness and ripe red fruit flavours make it a super complex cup. In the finish you’ll get a touch of chocolate and summer berries. Available now in the web shop here

I’d read a couple of things about Starbucks’ Leadership Lab – including the bill for it all clocking in at $35 million. I don’t really know how that gets broken down, because I can’t imagine the staging of it all cost this much. Regardless of what I think about the coffee served in Starbucks – I would still have enjoyed visiting this thing. Have a look at the video: I have no doubt it would have inspired me as a manager/partner at the company. I can’t help but wonder what the effects would be if you put on a near identical, less brand focused, event for the public. Less about selling brands and products, and more about finding interactive ways to get people to engage with coffee. The SCAA certainly could pull something like this off – though I don’t know if the return on investment/monetary cost currently makes it viable. There is a little more about the Leadership Lab here . Interesting to also note the implied turnover of an average Starbucks store being in excess of $1m. Again, say what you will about their cups of coffee – they’re still winning on the other metrics in comparison to most independents. Related posts: Looking forward to the NBC I have to get up silly early (4am) to go and catch my flight to Copenhagen tomorrow. Really looking forward to seeing lots of people as well as finding out... A simple explanation I am extremely grateful to everyone who responded in the comments of the last post about taste and temperature. I learned a great deal and now have some more avenues... A Little Coffee News Roundup There are a few interesting pieces of coffee news floating around at the moment, that seemed worth discussing. There is a common sentiment across the three that is kind of...