Coffee Posts

Whittard Guatemalan Elephant

I was a little surprised to discover that Whittard even did coffee when they recently asked me if I'd like to sample some of their offerings. In my mind, they've always been a tea shop, albeit with the occasional (and, if I'm honest, not particularly exciting) strange flavoured coffee. But no, they have a healthy ...

Cherizena Turquino Montanes

I came across Cherizena at this year's Abergavenny Food Festival; it's hard to resist a stall laden with heavenly smelling coffee beans, so I ended up coming home with a bagful of things to try. This is their Rare Cuban Turquino Montanes coffee, from their higher priced speciality range. Produced in small quantities, it's described ...

Taylors Christmas Blend

Christmas seems to be one of those times when just about every producer comes up with special editions. Often this seems to be a quick repackage with holly on the packaging and sleigh bells playing in the background, but sometimes you get something genuinely different. This week's coffee is Taylors Christmas Blend – described ...

Waitrose Sumatra Mandheling Beans

I originally bought these beans for a coffee stout I was making; to be honest they were a fairly random choice as I wanted whole beans and it didn't seem worth splashing out on some high end beans just to go into some beer. The reason I needed beans was simply that I ...

Taylors Cafe Brasilia

I'm slowly realising what a monumental can of worms I've opened for myself, as my "to taste" coffee cupboard is starting to look a little like my equivalent beer and whisky cupboards. Happily, this means I'm drinking a whole lot more tasty coffee than before, when I would often (don't tell anyone) just default ...

Taylors Lazy Sunday

Although I've tried a lot of different coffees, especially courtesy of the work coffee club, the one thing they generally have in common is that they're at the stronger end of the scale. When the nice folk at Taylors recently sent me some samples, they included some coffees from the 'medium roast' end of ...

Ca Phe ZgoZ

This week sees a coffee that you won't easily find on the supermarket shelf but it's well worth hunting it down. A Vietnamese coffee from Ca Phe VN; I went directly to their stall in Broadway Market, but they have an online shop as well. This is their house brand, ZgoZ – or NgoN, ...

Vending Machine Coffee With A Difference

It's fairly well known that Japan loves it's vending machines, but you don't really appreciate how ubiquitous they are until you go there. It's said that in London you're never more than ten feet from a rat – well in Japan, the same is true of the vending machine. Of course, being Japan it's ...

Taylors After Dark

It seems appropriate to start my coffee tastings with the highest scoring easily available coffee from our workplace coffee club – Taylor's After Dark. A few notes on tasting. Firstly, my coffee vocabulary is woefully inadequate. I've tried to treat them like beer, and ignore whatever is written on the packet but anyone who ...

An Introduction

Despite appearances, I don't live a life as fuelled by beer and whisky as this blog suggests. Sadly, the day job requires that I remain reasonably sober and awake, and my soft drink of choice has always been coffee. If I'm honest, I have historically tended to drink whatever coffee came out of the ...