Category Archives: Saturday Supplement

A Saturday Supplement is any post that’s not a Coffee Spot

2016 Awards – Best Takeaway Coffee

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Amazing latte art in my JOCO Cup at Notes, Canary Wharf.Our second shortlist in the 2016 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Best Takeaway Coffee” Award, which was won last year by Notes, Canary Wharf. It recognises those places which, braving the elements, still produce an excellent cup of coffee. This includes coffee carts, coffee stalls, those Coffee Spots which are so small that they only serve takeaway coffee and those Coffee Spots where I regularly get my takeaway coffee (even if they offer a regular sit-in option).

In fairness, I don’t feature a lot of takeaway places on the Coffee Spot, partly because, for me, a lot of what makes a good Coffee Spot is the atmosphere. This can be hard to achieve at a stall when you’re serving your coffee in a paper cup (another bugbear of mine; so these days I always take my own cup with me!). However, there are plenty of great takeaway places out there, serving excellent coffee, so don’t be afraid to give them a try.

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2016 Awards – Most Unlikely Place to Find a Coffee Spot

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The Amid Giants & Idols logo from the A-board outside.The first shortlist for the 2016 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Most Unlikely Place to Find a Coffee Spot” Award, won in 2015 by Amid Giants & Idols. Finding Coffee Spots in cities such as New York, Edinburgh or Manchester is to be expected. However, good Coffee Spots are everywhere, some of them are in very unexpected places, both geographically and in terms of setting.

This Award is very much defined by the nominees on the shortlist. Some of these are geographical, a reward for bringing great coffee to unexpected places. Others are a recognition of a great or unusual setting for a Coffee Spot.

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Coffee Spot Awards 2016

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An espresso, made by my Rancilio Silvia espresso machine, in a classic white cup and saucer from Acme & Co., New Zealand, distributed in the UK by Caravan Roastery.Merry Christmas to all my readers old and new! I hope you’re having a great Christmas. As the year comes to an end, so it’s time for the Coffee Spot Awards, now into their FIFTH year! It seems only yesterday that my friend Andrew Rilstone suggested the first Coffee Spot Awards. If only I’d have known what I was unleashing back then…

2016’s been an amazing year, with more Coffee Spots visited and written about than ever. The annual Coffee Spot Awards provides a chance for me to reflect on all the great places I’ve visited and to give them all some more well-deserved time in the limelight. As usual, there are 20 Awards, the shortlists for each being publishing between now and New Year’s Eve, the winners being announced on New Year’s Day.

Thanks to everyone who’s visited the Coffee Spot, followed me on Twitter, liked my Facebook page, +1ed me on Google+ (a dwindling number!) and liked my pictures on Instagram. While I do this for the love of coffee, it means a lot to me that so many of you take the time to read and comment on my writing. Without you, it really would be pointless.

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Hot Numbers, Gwydir Street Update

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The new Hot Numbers logo from the sign outside the original branch on Gwydir Street, Cambridge.I first visited Hot Numbers in the summer of 2014. Back then it was the one place that pretty much everyone had recommended to me in Cambridge. Café, single-origin roaster, music venue and, by association, art gallery, it had something for everyone and was pretty much the only speciality coffee place in town. How things have changed!

Now Cambridge boasts the The Espresso Library, Urban Larder and Novi in the centre of town, with Stir on the outskirts. There’s also a second Hot Numbers, a coffee shop which doubles as the roastery on Trumpington Street, which the staff were talking excitedly about during my visit in 2014 and which opened towards the end of that year.

With all that change going on, it was too much to ask that the original Hot Numbers on Gwydir Street would be unaffected. However, I was unprepared on my return earlier this year for just how much had changed! The good news, though, is that the most important thing hasn’t changed: the coffee. Still all roasted in-house, Hot Numbers still only serves single-origins, each carefully matched to how you’re drinking it. This includes options on espresso and pour-over via syphon, Aeropress and Clever Dripper.

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The Roasting Party

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I first came across The Roasting Party, subject of today’s Meet the Roaster, in 2014 at Beany Green, Paddington, where, for a couple of years, a Roasting Party flat white was the start to my working day. Shortly afterwards, I met Kirby and Wes, the Aussie duo behind The Roasting Party, at that year’s London Coffee Festival. I’ve been following their progress ever since, both as Beany Green has expanded and as The Roasting Party has gained accounts at the likes of C.U.P. in Reading, Brighton’s The Marwood and Espresso by K2 & Farm Girl Café in West London. Most recently, The Roasting Party has started supplying Winchester’s very own Coffee Lab.

Kirby and Wes (perhaps unfairly) have a reputation as the party boys of speciality coffee, free-spirited Aussies who don’t take themselves too seriously. On the other hand, as the name suggests, they do like a party, which is abundantly clear to anyone who’s visited The Roasting Party stand at successive London Coffee Festivals, where there’s even a resident DJ…

This, however, does The Roasting Party a disservice, since while Kirby and Wes might not take themselves very seriously, they do take the business of coffee extremely seriously indeed…

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The Coffee Spot Christmas Gift Guide 2016

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Some lovely latte art from Rag & Bone Coffee in my Therma Cup, one of this year's Christmas Gift suggestions.It’s that time of the year again, when everyone publishes their Christmas gift guides. Well, never one to be accused originality, here’s the Coffee Spot’s entry into the fray, an eclectic selection of gifts for your coffee-loving friends/relatives.

Let’s be honest, the coffee-loving community can be awkward to buy for, particularly if, like me, they’re towards the far end of the coffee-geek spectrum, when any choice runs the risk of being ill-informed. Do you get them coffee? Or coffee-related kit? Or a book about coffee perhaps?

Never fear, the Coffee Spot’s here to help you out, whether you’re a novice, looking for pointers for gifts for your coffee-obsessed friend, or if you’re that coffee-obsessed friend, looking for a handy guide to point your friends towards. There’s also a few suggestions for presents to help those of your coffee-loving friends who’re at the top of the slippery slope of coffee-geekdom and who just need a helping nudge to start them on the headlong descent into the rabbit-hole of speciality coffee.

Of course, while this is styled a Christmas gift guide, feel free to return to it throughout the year. It serves just as well as a birthday or anniversary gift guide…

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Flat Caps Carliol Square (Bunker Coffee Update)

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The Flat Caps Coffee logo, taken from a bag of coffee roasted to mark Flat Caps' successful Kickstarter.Back in the summer of 2016, Joe of Newcastle’s Flat Caps Coffee, decided to launch a Kickstarter to fund a second coffee shop alongside the legendary basement on Ridley Place. Five months (and one successful Kickstarter) later and Flat Caps has not one, but two new coffee shops. Funny how these things work out… Flat Caps Carliol Square is the first of these, while the second, Flat Caps Campus North, is next door.

Eagle-eyed readers will spot something familiar about Flat Caps Carliol Square. Not long after the Kickstarter was successfully funded, the opportunity to take over Bunker Coffee & Kitchen presented itself. However, this isn’t just a re-badging of an existing operation: other than the physical space itself, Flat Caps has pretty much changed everything, creating a new coffee shop just as thoroughly as if a new build had been fitted out…

Those who know Flat Caps Ridley Place will at least find the coffee offering familiar: three coffees, each available as espresso or filter, changing on a regular basis from a limited cast of roasters. Added to that is a much-expanded food offering, taking advantage of the large kitchen space at Carliol Square, plus extended opening hours.

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Manchester Coffee Festival 2016 Part III

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A flat white from Carvetii in my Therma Cup at the Manchester Coffee Festival, 2016.Welcome to the third and final part of my round up of this year’s Manchester Coffee Festival. In Part I, I took a look at the venue itself, and also my favourite coffee competition, the UK Cup Tasters’ Championship, won this year by Freda Yuan from Caravan. Then, in Part II, I focused on all the coffee roasters who were there in force this year. Today I’m going to finish things off with a look at the non-coffee stuff (equipment, reusable cups, milk, cake, tea…), although there’s also one coffee-related item that got missed out last week… Oops.

I had a chance to look at the Conti 60th Anniversary espresso machine which I’d first seen at World of Coffee in Dublin earlier this year, plus there was a chance to catch up with some reusable cup manufacturers. As usual, there was lots of food at the Manchester Coffee Festival, including three street food stalls, a bakery, and my friends from Cakesmiths (which now has its own café, Bakesmiths). Then there was milk and I even had a look at some tea, before rounding things off with a coffee cupping…

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The 2017 Coffee Spot Calendars

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My Therma Cup reusable cup and my Travel Press enjoy the view at the southern rim of the Grand Canyon.The Coffee Spot Calendar is now an annual event: this is the fourth year I’ve produced one. As before, the calendars are A4 in size and professionally-printed on glossy paper. Each month has a landscape, full-sized picture from one of my favourite Coffee Spots of the last 12 months, although this year my friend Keith has helped by choosing some of the pictures. As an added bonus, I’m also producing the Coffee Spot Lighting Calendar, something which I started last year with the help of my friend Sharon Reed, who has once again chosen most of the pictures.

Calendars cost £12.00 with a flat £2.00 postage and packing charge, regardless of how many you order. There are also discounts for multiple purchases. If you think we’re likely to meet up in the near future, I’ll even waive the postage and hand your calendar over in person! This is particularly relevant if you are going to La Marzocco’s Out of the Box on this Saturday (3rd December) since I’ll be there!

If you’re ordering from outside of the UK, then I’m afraid I have to charge more for postage and can’t offer any discounts for multiple purchases (unfortunately the charges increase rapidly with the weight of the package, unlike postage within the UK). For orders for Europe, postage and packing is £4.00 for one or two calendars, while for the rest of the world, it’s £6.00. If you want more than two, please get in touch regarding postage.

January 2017: This year’s Coffee Spot Calendars are sold out. Thanks to everyone who bought one (or more!). However, I can still print them on demand, so if you really want one, please get in touch and I’ll see what I can do. I can’t guarantee any prices though.

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Manchester Coffee Festival 2016 Part II – Meet the Roasters

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A flat white in my Therma Cup in front of the Carvetii logo at this year's Manchester Coffee Festival.Welcome to Part II of my round up of this year’s Manchester Coffee Festival (the festival previously known as Cup North). In Part I, I took a look at the venue itself, and also my favourite coffee competition, the UK Cup Tasters’ Championship, won this year by Freda Yuan from Caravan. This time I want to focus on the coffee, looking at the various roasters who were there in force this year. I’ll finish things off in Part III with a look at the non-coffee related material (equipment, reusable cups, milk, cake, tea…)

I tried to focus on people I don’t often get to see, so while I stopped by to say hello to the likes of Origin (which I’ve written about three times this year) and my friends at Allpress, I didn’t linger too long. I also ran into Glasgow’s Avenue Coffee and Dear Green Coffee who were visiting but not exhibiting. Talking of Scotland, I failed utterly to visit Artisan Roast, which had come all the way down from Edinburgh. And Union Hand-roasted, although at least I caught up with Union at the London Coffee Festival this year, so I don’t feel too bad.

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