Coffee curation and the pursuit of flavour
There’s a lot we know about grinding. Grinding finer helps us extract more, grinding more coarsely speeds up the flow rate of an espresso. We know that a hot grinder under heavy use changes the grind size and the quality of the bed of ground coffee. The analogy of the title, however, refers to everything we don’t know. The results we can taste, watch and log, but which we can’t fully explain or understand, much like dark matter. And in some cases we question whether or not the ideas we’ve posited even exist. In fact, this analogy carries nicely across...
Read moreThis title is slightly misleading in that it suggests that “multisensory coffee drinking” is some kind of new-fangled coffee drinking experience that you’ve yet to par take in. When really it describes every single coffee drinking experience you have ever had. Some of them (coffee drinking experiences) may seem to, or actually do consider this multisensory nature of drinking and eating. Others will seem to or indeed have not considered it. But that doesn’t change the fact that a multisensory experience will happen in both cases. The name of your dish, the presentation of your coffee, the weight and texture...
Read moreThis is mostly a follow-up on a post I wrote around a year ago which explored the idea of set recipes and dialling in, specifically regarding espresso. As well as bearing that post in mind, here I'd like to explore espresso and how I feel about it at this moment in time. A lot has happened during the past year -such is the current pace of exploration in speciality coffee- and our evolving relationship with it, particularly where espresso is concerned. An Australian barista champion joined forces with an American coffee professional and together they delivered a WBC performance and...
Read moreThis post is a little update on the water and coffee project that we have been working on. In February I was invited to speak amongst illustrious company for the first Tamper tantrum Live held in the U.K. It took place in Birmingham at what was also the first Superheat format for the UKBC. Tamper Tantrum is the brain child of Steve Leighton and Colin Harmon. The format allows the speaker to choose their own topic and they get 20 minutes on stage to present, this is followed by a Q&A session with the audience. The variety of speakers who have...
Read moreThe great news is that both I and Seb won National coffee competitions which means we will be off to Rimini, Italy to compete in the world competitions early next month. The bad news is that with this and other staff commitments, it means we don’t have the resources to run the shop for the week we are away. Only Jason an Elliot will be home to staff the bar. Don’t worry though, we have come up with a solution. It’s a pretty cool one which should hopefully be an event in its own right. As we don’t have the...
Read moreThis post is mostly triggered by a talk I attended at the University of Bath (it’s really neat having the University up the road) by the head of marketing from Brew Dog. This talk was put on for a group of current MA students. The talk itself mainly charted Brew Dog’s meteoric rise since they began in 2007. The talk was really engaging and interesting, especially given that the whole talk was lubricated with examples of Brew Dog’s wares. It was an exercise in branding strategy, communication and positioning. A Q&A session followed and provided plenty of food for thought,...
Read moreSeasonality has become a key aspect of speciality coffee and part of what distinguishes it from commodity coffee, of course this sits alongside the most important difference, which is that of flavour. Traceability and provenance are tied up with the seasonality factor, but one of the main reasons for focusing on coffee as a seasonal product was the way past crop tastes. The coffees would lose all of their positive acidity and often much of their wonderful character, on top of this they would develop baggy, musty and generally nasty flavour. The time frame for this degradation was not set...
Read moreLooking to shop in US Dollars? Please visit our Colonna US store. All orders are processed and shipped from our UK roastery.