London Coffee Shops

I had a nice visit to London last month and we had our customary visit to a few coffee shops there. We usually go into flat white which I first visited a few years ago. It really inspired me at the time, I hadn’t really seen anyone do latte are before and after that I had to learn it. The taste of the first cappuccino that I had there really opened my eyes to how good coffee can be. Ths time though we went to the Milk Bar which is assosiated with them, I’m not sure how exactly but it is similar in the service and coffee but the decor is different, really cool and cosy. I love the door closing mechanism withh the portafilters, a nice touch.

They are now using Square Mile Coffee not Monmouth and it was very nice. I went for a cap and then an espresso, those guys are good at making coffee. I love it that the main thing is the coffee and there is not much else on show, no big fridges or anything, stylish but independent looking.

The next place we went was fernadez and Wells (see pic), the food here is awsome for a coffee shop, I had a quick look at the Deli round the corner but then went to the coffee shop. It all looks so tempting being laid out in from of you like that! I had probably the best panini I have ever had there, and a coffee, and a nice chat with the barista there, feeling pretty caffiened-up by that point! It is a beautiful looking shop, very simple but quality, that goes for the food aswell

I look forward to my next trip…

Easter Coffee Tasting

Over the easter weekend we took advantage of having a few friends over at my sisters house and did some cupping and created a new espresso blend tat we will be using this summer.  It was fun to show our friends how we go about tasting coffee and interesting to see what they thought about the coffees and get another perspective on things.

The blend we came up with was equal quantitites of Brazil Cachoeira, Sumatra Lingtong Batak and  Rwanda Murambi Bourbon, it had great depth, smooth body and sweetness.  We will  get our roaster Steve from Has Bean to roast us up an initial batch and see how it goes.

Barista Tests

As some of you will know we are doing coffee the guest areas of a lot of festivals this summer.  We did five last year and they were really busy.  The coffee was good last year but we were short staffed on good baristas for a few of them which led to some of us doing insane hours!  Driving home was a danger, no amount of coffee would keep me awake.

So, this year we have more really good baristas and I want to do some intensive training with the other guys to make sure that the coffee is second to none.

I have been putting some tests and parameters together that the guys will have to hit to be incharge of the coffee.  I have been coffee training for some time, however  much of the time it is in bars and restaurants where the training is basic and it is difficult to get the owners to  really strive for a higher standard.  I think the standard customers expect and what they know about how good coffee can be is slowly improving but it has still got a long way to go.  We like to supprise people by making great coffee at events where the produce is usually poor.

I think the following are good starting points;

Get the grind right (23-25 seconds works well for our blend) in 3 goes.

2 caps and 2 espressos in 3 minutes 30, no ground coffee left in the grinder, minimum waste, all drinks consistant and tasty. Flushing etc as per competitions.

Make a cappuccino and a latte from one jug, poor the cap first.  I think this is a really useful one for busy real world situations.

Also  knowing the blend so that  they can talk to the customers with confidence, and  being able to explain the joys and benefits of speciality coffee when people ask the question ”is it fair trade?”!

I will see how this goes, it will be fun to create some kind alternative  barista comp for each event, we have 4-6 baristas at each event so competition should be good.  Also other factors such as best customer comment,  salesmanship and showmanship should be involved to make things more fun!

Superlambananacappuccino!

What do you think of this! We did them for an event in liverpool that unfortunately never went ahead. It was for the launch of the new Liverpool brand.

The strange animal you see is a Superlambanana and was created to represent the trade going through the port of Liverpool when it used to be the biggest port in the world. Wool and bananas, why not stick them together?! In the summer of 2008 Liverpool was the capital of culture and there were over a hundred superlambananas all over the city all designed in different ways. They were then auctioned off to local companies.

How to make your girlfriend happy

• Well what you do is, buy some coffee machines, store them in your living room for a month until you get around to getting all the bits and pices together to make them work. Then you go about intalling them like this………
• Fill them up with water using an external pump, first of all blowing a load of air into the machine for 10 minutes before realising that it is not filling up. Realsise this , push the pipe into the water and spray water all over the living room.
• stop all the leaks between conections, the carpet is getting pretty wet now.
• your nearly there, throw a few beans around and some wet coffee grounds out of your make shift knock-out box.
• make sure you put something to catch the waste water underneath the machine, more damage to the carpet!
• When it works, after a couple of hours, stand back and admire your manly technical skills. Then apologise when you girlfriend comes home and say you will make it up to her by making her a beautiful cappuccino in the morning. Easy.

MIPIM 2009

Once again we were lucky enough to be asked to provide a coffee service on the Liverpool stand at MIPIM (the international property event in Cannes, France). This is a great event to do as it is sunny for one thing!

Liverpool also charter a yacht so here is a pic of me pretending to captain the boat, loving it.

I did a special blend for the event, 50% bolivia Macacambra and 50% El Salvador La Fanay with my roaster the legendary Steve from Has Bean (hasbean.co.uk). It went down really well with the delegates from Liverpool, nice and chocolatey, some of them even took some home with them. A big thanks to all the Liverpool Vision crew who were great hosts for the event and looked after me very well.

Hello world!

Hello, this is my first blog, I have been meaning to do this for a while!

I will aim to keep it up to date with anything that I find remotely interesting, so it may not be completely coffee.

I am going to get loads of photos on here of our progress with setting up a shop, and places we go with coffee.