We’re thinking about closing down the Google Checkout option in the Square Mile Shop, leaving PayPal and credit card payments behind. We thought that before doing anything we should ask your opinion first. Your votes are very much apprecited! Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

For those of you who have had problems signing up to Google Checkout, we’re now set up to take PayPal instead, so now you have the choice of payment options in the webshop!

The roastery was packed to the rafters with baristas and audience ready to participate in the first ever chapter of the UBF league’s epic undertaking, to crown the Ultimate Barista Fighter!!! Milk was spilled, costumes were admired, looks could have killed, gauntlets were thrown and there was generally much yelling and amusement! Excellent night, and only the beginning of what is surely to become a highlight of the London social calendar! Results, pictures and feeds to subscribe to if you want to be the first to know what the next challenge is going to be, and how to get in there early to throw down next month! http://ultimatebaristafighter.wordpress.com

Happy day at SQM headquarters as our new Synesso Hydra arrives in London, all shiny and new and ready to for action at the UBF throwdown on Wednesday! We’ve been distributors for Synesso in the UK since we started up the roastery, having been fans of the machine for years. When we visited the Synesso factory in Seattle in June 07, seeing the care and attention put into every machine makes it a special treat every time one of them passes through our roastery on the way to a cafe or espresso bar. Since we sold the Synesso Cyncra that many of you have seen and had a chance to pull shots on at the roastery, we’ve been eagerly awaiting the Hydra’s arrival, James especially itching to have a play with some of the extra whistles and bells Mark and the crew so kindly installed for us. We should be fully installed tonight, then we’ll get it primed and ready for barista battle in a couple of days!

We are going to host the first bout of the Ultimate Barista Fighter competition! I know what you are thinking: Ultimate Barista whatnow? A few of us in London thought that it was about time we did an event for baristas – and a throwdown or several would be fun – so the Ultimate Barista Fighting League was born. Over the next year there will be monthly bouts – different challenges and throwdowns (so it isn’t always latte art) culminating in one barista being crowned champion (we have a rather splendid prize lined up too!). The emphasis is heavily on the fun aspect – so if you are a barista in or around London and you fancy a throwdown with beer and stuff then you best head here for info on the first challenge and how to get tickets. If there are spaces you can sign up on the night, but the only way to get a guaranteed spot is to buy the ticket in advance. The competition will be judged by the crowd – so if you just fancy coming down and drinking our beer then that would be splendid too. Tell your friends. Tell your local baristas. Tell other baristas. Tell everyone! 16 spots available – only one takes home the prizes…. We’ll keep posting more info on the blog here (it is in its infancy right now – expect more beautification soon!). See you there? It is going to be outstanding!

What a way to round off this run of espresso events! Taste of Canada was an awesome evening, as always made special by the coffees the roasters sent. Frustratingly the coffee from Discovery fell victim to our postal service (do you see a theme across these events!). Onto the evening: This was probably our busiest event to date, the room got pretty hot and so we opened the main door to let a little summer inside. I pulled a lot of shots, and I think I was pretty happy with most of them. The standard of coffees across these events has been insanely high which means we have a very demanding audience. I think they all left very happy. As always at the end voting for favourites was somewhat split – which is no bad thing! What made me very relieved was that the crowd’s descriptions pretty much matched what the roasters themselves described. Except for ‘puppies.’ Once again I really want to know who wrote that on the board! We do always ask participating roasters if they fancy making a video, and occasionally they do and this time we have an awesome one for you: 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters – Epic Espresso Thanks for all at 49th Parallel Roasters for both the video and the amazing coffee, and thank you to Transcend Coffee , JJ Bean , Origins and Discovery for taking part!

Today we took delivery of our new Colombian coffees, all from our favourite region of HUILA!!! The Obispo that helped Gwilym win the WBC was also from Huila, and we have huge faith in the coffees coming out of there. These three are all from former Cup of Excellence winning farms, the first of which is an extra bit special for me. The Progreso from Mr. Neovan Manrique from the Municipality of Pitalito was the farm that placed 2nd in the 2006 1st Harvest Cup of Excellence, which I had the pleasure of being on the jury for! It was my favourite coffee of the auction, and I’m so so happy to have this coffee now, three years later! The second coffee is from Mrs. Edilma Piedrahita, also from Pitalito. This farm placed 9th in the 2005 1st Harvest Cup Of Excellence. And the last one is from Mr. Luis Carlos Torres Casanova, again from Pitalito. This farm placed 6th in the 2005 1st Harvest Cup of Excellence. We’ll blog more about these coffees as they go into the webshop, however we won’t launch them all in one go. Some of one of them will be a part of the Summer espresso, the rest and the others will be earmarked for a lighter ‘filter’ roast. Based on this evenings test roasts we’ll see how rested they are and decide which order to present them in, and we’ll repack them into foil to preserve them for the duration of the next few months. We’re excited!

Quiet for a while, then two posts in one day! Such a flurry of activity! So – the final Taste of Event that we are going to do for a while. They have been a huge success (far more popular than we ever expected) but we don’t want the format to become stale. We will still be doing events and tastings, but not pulling hundreds of shots of espresso at 7 at night! The roasters we have for this means that these events go out on a high! We hope to have coffee from: 49th Parallel , JJ Bean , Discovery Coffee , Transcend Coffee , Hines/Origins and Phil & Sebastian. Awesome! 40 tickets in the webshop, so be quick! Taste of Canada tickets.

Screen printing in El Salvador Aida Batlle sent us the above image, taken in El Salvador of one the guys who have been screen printing by hand the bags for the coffees we bought from there this year – the bag in the photo is from Finca Mauritania. Awesome to see something like this, the attention to detail paid at every stage to these coffees is outstanding – and to have someone paint your logo on their clothes because they like it makes us very happy indeed! We’re really excited by the coffees we are buying from Aida – we want to tell you more, but we’re all going to have to wait until they hit the UK!

Those of you who subscribe to the newsletter (if you don’t you can just over there —->) already know this, but for those that don’t we have three new coffees in the webshop, and very exciting they are too! We airfreighted two coffees in from Kenya - we cupped the samples, got incredibly excited and as they were such small amounts this was the easiest way to get them out quickly. They were also vacuum packed in 10kg bricks to make sure that we get them at their freshest. They are two very different coffees - each highlighting different flavours - and each as a stunning example of that cup profile. First up is the Tegu AA lot. This is the ‘classic’ Kenya profile, done with incredible sweetness and clarity. Big juicy blackcurrants, black cherries and blueberries made to shine by a wonderful acidity. Next up is the Ngunguru AA selection. Last year we carried the Muchoki Peaberry from Kenya, and it was incredibly popular. This coffee reminds us of that cup but is sweeter. Tangerines, fresh strawberry, rosehip and cherries in a light bodied, crisp cup. So good! If you tried the Muchoki last year and enjoyed it then we feel pretty confident you’ll enjoy this too. Then we have the Blackburn Estate AA from Tanzania. This is the first Tanzanian coffee we’ve really loved and again a lovely showcase of the way fruit flavours can manifest in coffee. A heavier body, lower acidity and very sweet with plum, peach and stone fruit flavours as well as a little cocoa and blackcurrant. Very satisfying coffee indeed! We hope you try them and enjoy them and we’d love to hear your thoughts!