Coffee

Coffee

Favourite varieties: Chiroso, Sidra.

Favourite roasters: Long & Short UK (the default, Rojas Chiroso, Peng 15 Sidra with complex alcoholic aroma), DAK Amsterdam (Coco Bongo, Tropic Electric, Milky Cake), Scenery UK (Colourful is great, Laga Lizu is great/good, Shyira bad for cortado).

UK roasteries to try: 15 grams, 80 Stone, Assembly, Bad (Nat Has Her Beans is meh), Caravan, Campbell&Syme (For the people is good), Catalyst, Climpson & Sons, Coborn (Milky Way is great), Conscious (Arcangel is great), Danelaw (heirloom from Columbia was great), Dark Arts, Elsewhere, Harmony (Duwancho is good), Hej Coffee, Hermanos Colombian, Kiss the Hippo (Ethiopia Gerse is amazing), Legs, Lucid (Peru San Ignacio is good), Mission Coffee Works, Monmouth, Nostos, Obadiah (Etago Kenya is great), Old Spike Roastery, Outpost (Sironko Uganda is ok), Plot (Substance is acidic AF but great, Source is ok), Press Coffee & Co, Qima (Colombia La Palmera is good), Rascal, Red Bank (Red Devil is ok), Roasting Shed, Send, Skylark, Square Mile, Volcano Coffee Works, Workshop Coffee.

Avoid: All Press, Fireheart, Fried Hats, Ozone, Redemption Roasters.

Favourites:

  • Day Trip(Order Flat White). Outdoor seating. Now serving Colombia by prologcoffee.com (good) and El Salvador by bakalarcoffee.com (good).
  • Commons at Old Street Works. Now serving SkyLark blueberry (milky bad) and For the people by Campbell&Syme (good).
  • Snoozzze Coffee. Now serving Ethiopia About Last Night by Intermmission (great) and Peru Source (ok) by Plot.
  • Lift Coffee Shoreditch. Now serving Costa Rica blend (bad) and ? (try).
  • Pophams. Great, but always the same. They roast themselves at Ozone.
  • Morr. Now serving Kenya by Friedhats (meh) and Brazilian (ok).
  • Kiss the Hippo.No loo. Now serving Anniversary blend (ok) and George Street Blend (bad). Check back in early-mid August.
  • Knees Up. Outdoor seating. Now serving Arcangel Bolivia by Conscious (great) and Facility by Scenery (good).
  • Lodestar Coffee. Now serving ?
  • Scenery. Now serving Colourful (great), Laga Lizu (good), something lemony (try).
  • Long & Short. Now serving the default (great), Rojas Chiroso (great), Peng 15 Sidra with complex alcoholic aroma (great) and more (try).
  • Qima.
  • Nostos Coffee.
  • Special Guests Coffee in Marylebone.

Try:

  • Frequency?
  • Jolene Bakery & Restaurant? (Dalston)
  • Senzo?
  • WatchHouse Spitalfields?
  • Notes?
  • Climpson & Sons Café? (Canal)
  • % Arabica London Broadway Market? (Canal)
  • Specialty Cafetiere?
  • HARÜ Coffee?
  • Caravan Coffee Roasters and Brewbar? (with a friend)
  • Fink’s with Scenery coffee? (Bazaar)
  • Brewed Online?
  • Profile Coffee. Now serving Skylark (try) and La Cabra Daterra Brazil (meh).
  • sevente.Fireheart coffee is bad, everything else is great.
  • Colonna & Small’s. No tasting notes for stuff they roast. Agualinda Colombia and Inmaculada Sudan Rume both meh. Revisit in August.

Bean processing methods:

  • Natural / dry-process - beans are dried in skin-on cherries.
  • Pulp natural / Cereja Descascada - cherries are skinned, and the beans are dried in pulp.
  • Honey process - skin and pulp are removed, and the beans are dried in mucilage (which is sticky and honey-like, but no honey is involved). The mucilage dries onto the bean.
  • Semi-washed - the beans are dried in mucilage for a bit, then mucilage is removed before it dries on, and the beans continue drying without it.
  • Washed / wet-process - beans are dried in parchment, without the cherry. This is the most common method.
  • Wet-hulled / Giling Basah - the parchment is removed before the last stage of the drying process. This process is a necessity in Indonesia’s humid and rainy climate. This coffee has full body and no acidity. Bad coffee of this type is really bad.
  • Carbonic Maceration - whole cherries fermented in anaerobic environment.
  • Anaerobic Fermentation - de-pulped beans fermented in anaerobic environment.
  • Lactic Process - the bacteria feed on mucilage sugars, generating a high concentration of lactic acid; after reaching the desired pH, the coffee is washed to stop the bacterial growth.
  • Cascara Fermentation - de-pulped beans are fermented in cascara infusion (a tea-like brew made from dried coffee cherry skins).
  • Co-fermented - fermented with other ingredients, like coconut or strawberries.