2015 Awards – Coffee Spot with the Best Lighting

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.We kick off the second day with shortlist for the 2015 Coffee Spot Award for “Coffee Spot with the Best Lighting”. This is a new Award this year and follows on from the success of the Coffee Spot Lighting Calendar. It replaces the Coffee Spot Most Resembling a Coffee Shop Award.

Lighting in coffee shops has long held a fascination for me, with most of the galleries containing a shot or two of an interesting light-fitting. This Award celebrates those Coffee Spots with particularly outstanding lighting.

Continue reading

2015 Awards – Best Neighbourhood Coffee Spot

The Darkhorse Espresso sign, white writing on a red oval.The last of today’s 2015 Coffee Spot Awards shortlists is the “Best Neighbourhood Coffee Spot”. In 2014 this went to Darkhorse Espresso and it celebrates those Coffee Spots which are firmly rooted in, and which serve, their local communities. Unsurprisingly, the shortlist contains some of my favourite Coffee Spots of the year.

This Award has quite a wide geographical spread, with Coffee Spots from as far afield as SeattlePhiladelphia, Dorset, Lymington, Swindon, Brighton, SheffieldNewcastle, Esher and Notting Hill.

Continue reading

2015 Awards – Coffee Spot with the Best Basement

The cosy basement in Fleet Street Press, stretching out for the length of the shop above.Our third shortlist in the 2015 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Coffee Spot with the Best Basement” Award. As regular readers will know, I have a soft spot for Coffee Spots with good basements, so last year I introduced the “Best Basement” Award which was won by The Fleet Street Press.

To some, a basement is a dark, sometimes dingy, cramped space. However, when they are at their best, basements are cosy, welcoming spaces that provide the perfect spot to curl up with your coffee. This award celebrates those Coffee Spots with outstanding basements, the sort of places you want to go and spend all day in!

Continue reading

2015 Awards – Best Takeaway Coffee

An espresso being poured via a single-spout basket at Tamp Culture in ReadingOur second shortlist in the 2015 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Best Takeaway Coffee” Award, which was won last year by Tamp Culture. 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!). This year, I spent a large amount of my time commuting up to London for work, so this list is overly dominated by places at London stations and around my office in Paddington.

Continue reading

2015 Awards – Most Unlikely Place to Find a Coffee Spot

Kaffeine's A-board at Lord's, with apologies to 10CCThe first shortlist for the 2015 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Most Unlikely Place to Find a Coffee Spot” Award, won in 2014 by Kaffeine at Lord’s. 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.

Continue reading

Coffee Spot Awards 2015

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, it’s Awards time again. I can’t believe that these are the FOURTH Coffee Spot Awards. How did that happen? It only seems like yesterday that my friend Andrew Rilstone was suggesting the first Coffee Spot Awards. I’ve come a long way since then and 2015’s been a packed year, with more Coffee Spots than ever visited and written about.

With that in mind, it’s time to reflect on 2015 with the fourth Annual Brian’s Coffee Spot Awards. Once again 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.

Thank you to everyone who’s visited the Coffee Spot, followed me on Twitter, liked my Facebook page, +1ed me on Google+ (not many of you in that category!) 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.

Continue reading

Notes, Canary Wharf

Amazing latte art in my JOCO Cup at Notes, Canary Wharf.It took a while, but speciality coffee has reached Canary Wharf, and, having got here, it’s not going away. There are now two branches of both Taylor Street Baristas (Canary Wharf and South Quay) and coffee shop/roaster, Notes. Although I’ve already written about Notes in Crossrail Place, today’s Coffee Spot, on the concourse of Canary Wharf tube station, was the first I came across when, back in September, I innocently wandered through the ticket barriers and thought “ooh, look, a Notes”.

Sadly I only had my phone, which wasn’t up to adequately photographing somewhere which is entirely underground. It was only last week that I was able to return, proper camera in hand, at a time when there weren’t customers queuing out of the door!

Although small (and with no seats), the Canary Wharf Notes thinks it’s just as big and important as its much larger siblings. While there’s no wine or beer, there are impressive breakfast and lunch menus, a good selection of cake and coffee-kit/beans for sale. The coffee’s what it’s all about though: serving only single-origins, all roasted in-house, there’s espresso plus bulk-brew, and, surprisingly, Canary Wharf consistently serves the best coffee that I’ve had at Notes.

Continue reading

200 Degrees Coffee Roasters

The 200 Degrees Coffee LogoBefore there was ever 200 Degrees, the award-winning coffee shop in the centre of Nottingham, there was 200 Degrees Coffee Roasters, who first brought my attention to Nottingham as somewhere where you could get decent coffee.

200 Degrees grew out of Belle and Jerome, a well-known coffee shop in West Bridgford, just down from Trent Bridge cricket ground, and a desire of the owners, Rob and Tom, to roast their own coffee. The catalyst was third partner, Tim, who brought a passion for roasting, having caught the coffee-bug in New Zealand.

Called 200 Degrees after the temperature green beans are roasted at, 200 Degrees grew from fairly humble beginnings to become what is now a fairly major player in Nottingham’s growing speciality coffee scene. As well as supplying its own coffee shop, 200 Degrees also supplies a number of other local shops, roasting a couple of espresso blends, a filter blend and three or four single-origin filters.

As well as supplying coffee, plus the necessary kit to go with it, 200 Degrees is also expanding into training, both for its wholesale customers and for the general consumer, as seen in its training room at the 200 Degrees Coffee Shop.

Continue reading

The Coffee Spot Christmas Gift Guide

The Christmas Logo from Press CoffeehouseIt’s always a tricky question, isn’t it? What to get for that coffee-loving friend of yours. It’s particularly tricky, 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 is 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 for your coffee-loving friends who’ve not yet disappeared down the rabbit-hole of speciality coffee and just need a little nudge along the way.

As with all things Coffee Spot, this guide’s not definitive, nor is it a “best-of” list. Instead, my suggestions are all things which I’ve come across over the past year and thought “that would make a good present”. With one or two exceptions, they’re things which I own, having either bought them or been given them during the year, so don’t worry, it’s not a proxy list of things you should be getting me this Christmas!

Continue reading

2016 Coffee Spot Calendar Update

It’s that time of year again. After the success of the Coffee Spot Calendar over the last two years, I’m back with the 2016 Coffee Spot Calendar! As before, I’ve produced a professionally-printed A4 calendar on glossy paper. Each month there’s a landscape, A4 picture from one of my favourite Coffee Spots of the last 12 months. I’ve also produced a limited number of desktop calendars. This year, however, there’s an additional bonus: the Coffee Spot Lighting Calendar!

Each calendar costs £12.00 (£15.00 for the Lighting Calendar) and, if you’re in the UK, there’s a flat fee of £2.00 postage and packing, 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 be at the La Marzocco Generation Coffee event in London on this Saturday, 12th December), I’ll even waive the postage and hand your calendar over in person!

For orders for Europe, the postage and packing is £4.00 for one or two calendars, while for the rest of the world, it’s £6.00. I apologise for the excessive postage charges, but this is what it’s costing me to send them to you!

December 26: All the calendars are now SOLD OUT. However, you can still order them from me; what I’ll do is get the printers to send it direct to you. Unfortunately this means that I no longer get any volume discounts and so have to charge £15 for each wall calendar and £10 for each desktop one.

Continue reading