Three new Colombian coffees!
Posted by Anette Moldvaer and posted on June 18, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
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!
Taste of Canada
Posted by James Hoffmann and posted on June 14, 2009
Filed Under Event, espresso, webshop | 2 Comments
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!
We don’t even have t-shirts yet!
Posted by Anette Moldvaer and posted on June 14, 2009
Filed Under New Coffee, origin | 2 Comments
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!
New Coffees
Posted by Anette Moldvaer and posted on May 26, 2009
Filed Under New Coffee, webshop | 6 Comments
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!
Gwilym Davies: 2009 World Barista Champion
Posted by James Hoffmann and posted on April 19, 2009
Filed Under barista competition, news | 22 Comments
We are delighted to annouce that Gwilym Davies is the 2009 World Barista Champion. We’ll post more about the routine, the coffee and all things WBC but for now huge congratulations to him and also to Anette for roasting the winning coffee three years in a row!
Photo from barista magazine
Gwilym makes WBC Finals
Posted by Anette Moldvaer and posted on April 18, 2009
Filed Under barista competition | 3 Comments
Congrats to Gwilym for making the World Barista Championship finals tomorrow. He represents the UK along side competitors from the USA, Hungary, South Korea, Canada and Ireland.
It is going to be a lot of fun – watch live tomorrow online:
Go Gwilym, Go!
Last roast: Santa Rita Natural
Posted by Anette Moldvaer and posted on April 13, 2009
Filed Under news, webshop | 2 Comments
Another coffee we’ve loved is coming to the end of its run. The final roast will be Tuesday 21st April, so if you want a final taste of one of the most interesting coffees we found last year then be quick! We will see if we can get some more new crop soon, but it is unlikely because we have some other very exciting coffees on the way from El Salvador!
The evolving espresso label
Posted by James Hoffmann and posted on April 7, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized | 9 Comments
You might have noticed that each time a new espresso is released the label changes. Not only the contents and the descriptions (obviously!) but also the layout.
Autumn Espresso
Winter Espresso
Spring Espresso
The initial idea for the label was to create a tag cloud – the size of the descriptor indicating the likelihood and quantity of that particular flavour. We really liked this idea – we thought it was a good way to embrace the variability of brewing espresso – encompassing the changes in flavour that come with different ages, brewing water, brewing equipment and recipes.
However it fell down on anther goal – approachability. A huge quantity of coffee flavours are intimidating for someone just starting to get into coffee, and we didn’t want to feel like we were just preaching to the choir. So from Autumn to Winter the tag cloud was reigned back. Designing Spring I couldn’t help but feel that the cloud was still a bit much. It doesn’t help when someone relatively new to coffee looks at the back and expresses surprise that you do flavoured coffee.
So we simplified it again for Spring. We like the label and I think the key flavours described should show up across most brews. We still feel the tag cloud idea has merit though. We did have an idea of a microsite that allowed customers to input their cupping notes into the site to constantly update a swirling live tag cloud of the espresso. Crowd sourcing descriptors seemed like fun! However that probably won’t happen as the cloud would only really become useful when enough people enter data and at that point the espresso would be close to the end of its run as a seasonal blend.
This doesn’t mean we are done with the tagcloud idea – we still have a few experiments and projects for the future. We just wanted to talk a little bit about why the labels are changing and our thought behind it.
Fancy being a judge?
Posted by Anette Moldvaer and posted on April 5, 2009
Filed Under barista competition | 1 Comment
We are looking for people to come and judge Gwilym in the run up to the WBC. No formal coffee experience necessary – just an interest in getting to taste the drinks that will be served in Atlanta. We will try and work out a date once we have enough people but we are likely looking at around Sunday 12th, perhaps in the late afternoon/early evening.
We quite fancy the idea of three run throughs with three different judges teams. If you are interested then leave drop us an email at info at square mile coffee dot com. There is no guarantee that this will happen and registering your interest sadly won’t guarantee you a judging spot but we’d appreciate anyone stepping up and getting involved.
A rare and fun opportunity!
Taste of… DENMARK!
Posted by Anette Moldvaer and posted on March 31, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Oh boy oboy oboy oboy!
W are quite excited! APRIL 8th at 6:30pm at the roastery, espresso from 4 of Denmarks best coffee roasters, 1 Synesso, 1 Anfim, 1 or more baristas and dozens of espressocups: it’s Taste of Denmark time….
Featuring:
TICKETS IN THE SHOP !
As always, all proceeds to BIKES TO RWANDA.
Somebody make sure to bring smørrebrød, red sausages and frikadeller! No prizes for guessing what the beer will be! 