I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking “what would happen if you coated a portafilter basket in teflon?”
Ok, so that probably isn’t what you are thinking, but it was clearly what Paul from Coffee Hit was thinking. Two of these baskets arrived in the post this morning for me to play with, and play we did! (more…)
Some days Gwilym drops by for a chat and coffee, and now and then breaks my head a bit: Now, the ‘rules’ say that you are supposed to drink your espresso quickly. Everyone knows this. You stand at the bar, you drink it down as fresh as you can for maximum delicousness.
I never really liked hot espresso (well – espresso that was too hot because either the cup was unpleasantly hot or the shot had run too quickly), and I liked it a little cooler but I still tend to drink it pretty soon after brewing. Gwilym was just sat there, letting the tasty shot I had pulled go cold…. (more…)
Just a quick post – not really designed to be a how to, more a little anecdotal incident that I wanted to share. It is interesting how Extract Mojo starts to change the way you think about espresso.
This morning I was chatting to Jess as we were pulling shots (for in house consumption I should add). The coffee wasn’t tasting great and we started talking about dialling in and what we would change. I like having a timer around for dialling in, aware that I am woefully inconsistent when it comes to mental timekeeping and it is a key variable in dialling in – brew time has been something I’ve been trained to focus on. Couldn’t find the timer, so instead we grabbed the scales. (more…)
I think this is one of the most important emotions in coffee. (Go with me here….)
I try (as we all do at work) to drink as much coffee from other roasters as possible, and a good day is a day that I’m jealous. Jealous of how good a certain roast is, or how good a lot of greens are, or how beautiful a bag is, or jealous about a myriad of other things.
I don’t believe for a second that we have the best of everything, nor are the best at everything – but that’s the goal. I’d say that if you aren’t regularly jealous of another company for even the smallest detail then you’re missing out on some great inspiration. If you say you can’t find it, then you aren’t really looking.
I’m not advocating some sort of mean spirited competitive thing between companies, quite the opposite. There is so much diversity in coffee that it would be a shame not to enjoy it. The Kiandu from Ritual is absolutely delicious, I’m jealous they got that lot but I don’t think that is mutually exclusive to loving the coffees from Kenya we have right now.
The best thing about the “Taste of” events we used to do – where we’d pick five roasters from a certain country, get their coffee in and pull shots of it for interested people – was that we’d get to taste some incredible blends, totally different to what we were doing or trying to achieve. The best ones, regardless of their style, always made me think “Damn, I wish we’d done that!”, if only for a minute. (I tried to remember to actually just enjoy the coffee too) I hope I never lose that motivation. I also think jealousy can breed innovation, but that is a whole other post….