We’re really sorry for the late notice on this one - but we didn’t want to confirm until we knew we had coffee for it.  (Postmen world wide are our enemy!)

Taste of Australia is happening this Wednesday - the 19th November, from around 6.30ish til people stagger wide-eyed and caffeinated out into the night.

Check the webshop for links to the roasters, we’re really looking forward to this one!

In this second videocast we look at simple ways to make a better French Press.  We love making coffees in the press these days - and high acidity coffees like the Muchoki and the Santa Rita Natural really shine brewed this way.

Let us know your thoughts - leave a comment or send us an e-mail!

You can choose more than one day - so select the ones that work for you. This will help us decide dates in the future and help open up the events to as many people as possible.

So vote! (please)

People’s feedback has been great, and we are now working on getting some information on caffeine content and other information for future use.

We’re glad people around the world have been enjoying it - we are going to miss it when it is gone!  (We might keep a sneaky kilo for ourselves for ‘emergencies’!)

Fingers crossed we can source more for next year!

Videocast #1 - Cascara from James Hoffmann on Vimeo.

I didn’t sleep particularly well after this event, and I guess from the amount of coffee consumed that evening - not many other attendees did either.  But it was worth it!

Five amazing roasters kindly sent us down their coffees, and wherever possible I pulled shots to their dose, brew temp, volume and time.  The coffees were served blind and as usual we asked people to leave any tasting notes up on the whiteboard.  This anonymity lets people get a bit more creative and my favourite note of the evening was “Salami (in a good way!)”.  I wish I knew who wrote it now….!

We totally failed to take any proper pictures but there is a set here from Mark who came up from South West London.

The coffees were the following - click the links to see a little tag cloud generated from the notes everyone left on the white board:

Ecco Caffe - Experimental Espresso #5

Seven Coffee Roasters - Espresso

Ritual Coffee Roasters - Finca El Guayabo

Intelligentsia Los Angeles - Black Cat

Verve Coffe Roasters - Streetlevel Espresso (The Facemelter)

I have a lot of fun pulling shots on the night - a rare chance to be very busy behind the bar, and by the time we got to Verve I was glad of the chance to slow down - and slow down I did, as per their instructions!

The standard of the coffees was extremely high, everyone was very impressed I think. Clearly great greens are being roasted very carefully and by and large I tried not to get in the way when brewing it. The various coffees polarised people’s favourite choices and I am afraid we won’t be letting on which ours were…..

I think we are due to do Australia next - we just need to sort the logistics out and we’ll announce the date here and in the newsletter. (If you aren’t signed up for the newsletter you can do so at the bottom of the front page of the shop. We only mail you about once a month - no spam!)

We look forward to seeing some of you at the next one!

The Finca Mauritania Cascara is now available in the shop!

We’re really excited by how good this tastes, and how interesting it is.  We think coffee, and its inherent flavours, makes a bit more sense after tasting this.

We are looking forward to people’s feedback on this one - but don’t hesitate too long, we don’t have that much in stock to begin with, only about 40kg. We’re working to try and get more for next year but we’ll have to wait and see.

(I shall summarise each in three words!)

Autumn Espresso

Really, really tasty.

Los Luchadores Pacamara Espresso (limited edition)

Sweet savoury goodness.

Santa Rita Natural - El Salvador

Crazy fruit bowl.

Santa Rita Orange Bourbon - El Salvador

Satisfying, sweet, pleasing.

Takengon - Aceh, Sumatra

Heavy, full, clean.

There is obviously a lot more information in the shop so you should click around and have a read, drop us a note if you have any questions - and if you treat yourself to a bag or two we hope you really enjoy it.

Oh - and the Cascara will be on the site by the end of the week we hope!

There will be another Taste Of… event next month, and another cupping - we hope to see more of you there.

The Cascara is the dried outer fruit layer of the coffee cherry, typically considered either a waste product or sometimes used in compost.  However - if done right the process can produce a delicious and very rare ingredient.

Back before coffee was roasted and brewed, it was likely this fruit that was dried and brewed as tea.  Sometimes sweetened or complimented with spices like ginger this drink is best known as Qishr (spelled many different ways).

Whilst it doubtless has been done, we couldn’t help but wonder (hopefully) if this was the first time this drink had been made in the UK.  Who knows!

What we do know is that it really is quite delicious.  The cascara has notes of tobacco and rosehip, and the tea itself is very fruity and again very rosehip like.  It is surprisingly sweet though I could see how some people might want to sweeten it a touch more.

We have only a small amount available and are thinking about putting it in the webshop for those interested - if you are let us know.  It would be a very rare opportunity to taste something that is not only delicious but also a little historical glimpse into coffee’s history.  We are really excited about this, we hope you are too!