Tag Archives: cupping

Return of the Uber

For a while all has been quiet on the Uber front.  We shuffled some stuff around at the roastery, and as part of it we chose not to cut the old Uber into the new worktops as we planned to upgrade – the new Uber having a different (smaller) cutout.

The new Uber arrived today and [...]

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8 steps to develop your coffee palate

This post is really for coffee consumers who want to develop their palates, which leads to coffee becoming more enjoyable.
I had been in coffee well over a year before I really began to develop my vocabulary and descriptive skills, and that is probably more embarrassing as I had done some work in wine beforehand.
What does [...]

Posted in Coffee, Coffee Aroma, how to | Also tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Thoughts after a public cupping

I’ve really enjoyed the discussion going on after this post.   One comment that stuck in my mind was Aldo’s Fazenda Kaquend COE Vs Maxwell House experiment. It definitely affected some decisions I made when I was choosing coffees to take with me to a public cupping I did in East London as part [...]

Posted in Coffee, Opinion | Also tagged , , , , , | 21 Comments

A grand unified theory of espresso

Not too long ago I posted on Home Barista about trying to find a good way to measure the density of coffee beans. 1
As always the paricipants there were way smarter than me and offered several interesting options. I dropped into the thread that this was part of my idea of a grand unified theory [...]

Posted in Coffee, Espresso, Food Chemistry, Green Coffee, Opinion, Roasting | Also tagged , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Morning coffee

I have a confession to make:  I used to, in a very snobbish way, hate the idea of a coffee being an “after dinner coffee” or a “morning cup”.  I thought it was one of those really stupid ways of selling coffee – like how supermarkets use the word “strength” to communicate how dark a [...]

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Who is to blame for bad coffee?

I’ve written a lot recently with an industry readership in mind.  This post I write with the consumer firmly in mind.  This isn’t about exonerating lazy cafe owners and baristas, or excusing the chains or making allowances for restaurant coffee.  Anyone who loves or even likes coffee will often complain about how bad a lot [...]

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UK Cupping Competition

Just a quick post really about entering the Cupping competition today. I initially was told I couldn’t enter because they had 8 entrants and couldn’t possibly accomodate a 9th. Thankfully a couple of people dropped out so I had a chance to enter.
However I was also due to give a lecture/seminar at the [...]

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East Coast Roadtrip – Counter Culture Roastery, NC

I confess I knew more about Counter Culture’s coffee than I did about the company itself. I was excited to visit their roastery and also we were honoured to stay in the House of Chang.
I also confess that the change in the clocks caught me off guard and it took me a little while [...]

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East Coast Roadtrip – Washington, DC

Washington’s event was the first one in a Counter Culture training centre, and I was curious to see how it would be set up. We were due to cup at 10, but first we headed to a place called Tryst for a little breakfast and coffee (thank you David, for coffee and for suffering [...]

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2007 – A review of the year

A look back over the last 12 months, and all things coffee that have happened within them (both to me and others). World Championships, origin trips and other competitions as well as other coffee-centric highpoints of the year 2007.

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