04/08/2020
Despite being a staple of nearly every home, there's a lot of confusion around how to store coffee... "Can coffee go bad?" "Where should it be stored?" "How can I keep it fresher for longer?" We thought it was time to weigh in and share our thoughts on the matter, from the journey of the green crop, all the way to your home.
19/06/2020
A machine that hasn’t been properly cleaned and maintained will need repairing sooner than one that has. Not only that, but a dirty machine will never give you the quality of coffee that your customers deserve... We’re here to give you a few pointers on how to keep on top of your cleaning and show you what to avoid
30/04/2020
Over the last few weeks, we have been doing our best to keep local NHS services well-caffeinated. Given the circumstances they find themselves in, a good cup of coffee is the very least we can do for them. Back in March, before we entered lockdown, we pledged to give free coffee to NHS staff, from our two shops in Middlesbrough. With the support of Drew Rowley of React Nutrition, we had the equivalent of 500 coffees behind the bars. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the chance to give all of these... Read More
13/02/2020
It's not often that you can spend such quality time with a coffee producer, especially not from the comfort of your own roastery!
01/08/2019
What is Coffee Cupping? Cup tasting (a.k.a cupping) is the process of objectively assessing the quality of coffee samples. If you’ve seen anyone with what looks like a soup spoon, slurping loudly at a table full of coffees, they’ll have been cupping! Coffees are scored according to Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) protocol using this sheet, and the resulting total gives us an indication of the quality of the coffee – anything scoring 80+ being classed as specialty grade. This protocol gives us a shared language to use when talking to... Read More
05/04/2019
You’ll have seen it everywhere – from supermarket shelves to fast food outlets; from high street coffee chains to the most niche speciality coffee houses – ‘100% Arabica’ seems to be something that everyone boasts about. But what does it actually mean? We want to go one step further than just saying we use 100% Arabica coffees, and explain the background behind the claim: what that guarantees to you as a consumer, and what the alternatives are. First things first, a little science lesson… A quick delve into our biology... Read More
11/02/2019
At the heart of what we do, we take raw, green coffee beans, and roast them. But what does it mean to take a hessian sack full of beans and transform them into something delicious? There’s something unassuming about a green bean – it doesn’t have the same standout aroma as a roasted one, and to chew on one would be nothing short of disappointing – vegetal and grassy. The magic, of course, is in the roast. In the simplest possible terms, the roaster is where the green beans are... Read More
04/02/2019
Historically, it has been all too simple to think of coffee as just a thing that you find in a bag on a shelf in a supermarket. It has been there to serve the purpose of keeping us caffeinated, and aside from how strong we want it to be, there haven’t been that many other factors to consider when choosing what to brew at home. In more recent years, people have been paying more attention to the descriptors that are attached to the coffee they are buying. Whether that’s picking... Read More
03/01/2019
Cherries make a pretty sweet treat – finding the ripest, sweetest fruits in summer, and chewing away at the luscious juicy pulp and skins as we enjoy the sweet, rich flavours, before spitting out the stone at the centre of the fruit. This stone – or seed – to be precise, might be considered an inconvenience to our enjoyment of those delicious cherries! With coffee cherries, it’s the exact opposite. In this case, the treasure is the two seeds at the heart of the fruit, the rest of which has... Read More
01/12/2018
By David Burton Any serious coffee professional will tell you that objectively assessing coffee quality is probably one of the most difficult things to do. This is because no matter how hard we try, we will always let our own bias get the better of us, especially when it comes to something as subjective as flavour. Come New Year, I’ll be into my fifth year in coffee, and leaving my own bias at the door is still something I have to keep in check (however, I still love a bloody... Read More
