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Mission Statement

The purpose of this blog is to talk about coffee, that rather special little product which has kept the world going for millenia. I will be focusing on coffee beans, especially from roasters around where I live, in Cambridgeshire.

Background

Over the past ten years, people have been paying more and more attention to specialty coffee. The giants of Starbucks, Costa and Cafe Nero are increasingly supplanted by a wave of smaller independent coffee shops selling much more refined drinks. Alongside this is an expanding market of coffee roasters, who carefully source their product from across the world to supply these coffee shops and the pantry cupboards of individual consumers. 

As a result of this wave we consumers are expanding our palate: we are moving away from the classical dark "coffee" taste of commercial products towards coffee that tastes like dark fruit, or citrus, or chocolate, or flowers, or even tea! Consumers are also paying more attention to how they brew coffee, as gadgets and equipment saturate the market in every direction. Technical skill is increasing: phrases like grind size, brew ratios, water temperature, steep times, draw downs, pouring technique are no longer relegated to baristas. And we won't even begin to touch on espresso - an art form in itself but increasingly available to the average person. 

My coffee journey 

It began in university in 2014 when I got a fortnightly Pact subscription as a student deal. I transitioned from a mixture of hyper-strong Instant and Starbucks to an entirely new world of experience. At the time, in what must seem so simple for me now, I took the pack of pre-ground coffee they supplied, skimmed the label, opened the pack. whacked the grounds in a French Press with some boiling water, waited a bit, plunged, and drank the resulting amber liquid. Even that was great, and for a while my tastebuds (and incessant need for caffeination) was satisfied.Then I finished university, and moved to a new city to work a busy day job, and I basically forgot about it.

A few years later, when the world was in the midsts of a pandemic, I found my way back to coffee. A work colleague bought me a 1kg bag of whole beans from Costco and I decided to work with it. I hadn't entirely forgotten about coffee, but I started to pay more attention to it. I really delved into what exactly I was doing. I examined my brewing methods. I invested in a grinder and started to dial grind size. I bought scales to help with dosing. I got a bit into espresso. I learnt as I went along, watched some YouTube videos, and invested sensibly where needed.

As time went on friends and colleagues noted my hobby. Some have also started to explore the field, whereas others share their own experiences and what they have learnt. Every so often I get pictures of bags of coffee people have bought, and some have kindly taken bags back from holiday to give to me (thanks!)  It's interesting how there's less of en emphasis on the brew method, but the actual beans themselves. It's how it should be, really!

So that's why I started this blog: to describe the different coffee beans available around my local area and to give people an idea of where to purchase. I hope that this is useful for everyone!