You can see the full Hario range here.

Expect some videocasts soon covering a few of the brewing methods, and if you’ve got any questions do please let us know!

Photo courtesy of salxhart

Huge congratulations to John Gordon on winning the UK Barista Championship this year.  (We know the competition was over a week ago, and we’re a bit behind!)

Having joined the team at Square Mile around six weeks ago we’ve seen first hand the huge amount of effort and work that John put in, with great support from his fiancee Jess.

John had already started working on his UKBC blend with Steve at HasBean before he joined us, and knowing how hard Steve works and how good he is we had no intention of getting in the way of that relationship.

We’d also like to congratulate James Phillips of Dose on placing 5th – impressive considering he wasn’t going to compete until a couple of weeks before and this was his first time at the UKBC.

We were also extremely grateful to Jon Sharp of Kilimanjaro, Carl Fleischer of Opposite and Gary Whiteley who did an incredible job with our coffee in the semi finals.

Monday 21st December – Shipping as normal

Thursday 24th December – Closed

Monday 28th December – Closed (Boxing Day Holiday)

Tuesday 29th December – Shipping

Thursday 31st December – Closed

Monday 4th December and onwards – Shipping as normal.

If you have any question regarding your orders then do please get in touch.

Due to the Monday Bank Holiday and a recent postal strike in our area (We’re not loving Royal Mail at the moment…) Some of you will experience delays in receiving Juice (and probably also September’s subscription coffee.)  Given that Juice will benefit from a weeks rest before it’s brewed as espresso, the delay should hopefully not interfere with the quality of the shots, so we apologize for the wait, and hope you’ll enjoy it once it finally reaches you!

We’ve put some brewing instructions on the bag for everyone who bought some of the Juice Espresso blend.  However we wanted a central place where people could discuss the coffee, and perhaps share their experiences and brew recipes.  We can’t anticipate every combination of machine and grinder, and only really share what worked well for us.

So ask any questions, tell us what you think, and hopefully just plain enjoy the blend!

We thought that before doing anything we should ask your opinion first.  Your votes are very much apprecited!

We’re now sold out of tickets to compete on the night, but there is still lots of free standing room if you want to come watch, cheers and heckle, so we’ll see you all on Wednesday! Wooot!

We are going to host the first bout of the Ultimate Barista Fighter competition!

I know what you are thinking:  Ultimate Barista whatnow?

A few of us in London thought that it was about time we did an event for baristas – and a throwdown or several would be fun – so the Ultimate Barista Fighting League was born.  Over the next year there will be monthly bouts – different challenges and throwdowns (so it isn’t always latte art) culminating in one barista being crowned champion (we have a rather splendid prize lined up too!).

The emphasis is heavily on the fun aspect – so if you are a barista in or around London and you fancy a throwdown with beer and stuff then you best head here for info on the first challenge and how to get tickets.  If there are spaces you can sign up on the night, but the only way to get a guaranteed spot is to buy the ticket in advance.

The competition will be judged by the crowd – so if you just fancy coming down and drinking our beer then that would be splendid too.

Tell your friends. Tell your local baristas.  Tell other baristas.  Tell everyone!

16 spots available – only one takes home the prizes….

We’ll keep posting more info on the blog here (it is in its infancy right now – expect more beautification soon!).

See you there?  It is going to be outstanding!

Frustratingly the coffee from Discovery fell victim to our postal service (do you see a theme across these events!).

Onto the evening:  This was probably our busiest event to date, the room got pretty hot and so we opened the main door to let a little summer inside.

I pulled a lot of shots, and I think I was pretty happy with most of them.  The standard of coffees across these events has been insanely high which means we have a very demanding audience.  I think they all left very happy.

As always at the end voting for favourites was somewhat split – which is no bad thing!  What made me very relieved was that the crowd’s descriptions pretty much matched what the roasters themselves described.  Except for ‘puppies.’  Once again I really want to know who wrote that on the board!

We do always ask participating roasters if they fancy making a video, and occasionally they do and this time we have an awesome one for you:

49th Parallel Coffee Roasters – Epic Espresso

Thanks for all at 49th Parallel Roasters for both the video and the amazing coffee, and thank you to Transcend Coffee, JJ Bean, Origins and Discovery for taking part!

]]> http://www.squaremileblog.com/2009/07/08/taste-of-canada-report/feed/ 2 http://www.squaremileblog.com/2009/06/14/taste-of-canada/ http://www.squaremileblog.com/2009/06/14/taste-of-canada/#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:20:33 +0000 James Hoffmann http://www.squaremileblog.com/?p=278

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!

Taste of Canada tickets.

Photo from barista magazine