Forté Espresso Bar

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A cortado, made with Square Mile's Sweet Shop Blend at Forté Espresso Bar in Manchester.Once upon-a-time in Manchester, there was a tiny coffee shop called Caffeine & Co which, a few years later, changed its name to Pavé Coffee. Since June of this year, it’s gone by the name Forté Espresso Bar. Throughout all this change, one thing has remained constant: the ever-affable Dan, aka the nicest man in coffee, who, barring a short hiatus at the start of the year, when he and his wife had their first baby, has been a permanent fixture behind the counter, although he’s now been joined by the equally-lovely Jenny.

I’m firmly of the opinion that the majority of the customers come as much to see Dan as they do to drink his excellent coffee. That’s certainly the case for me, and I always make a point of popping in to say hello when I come up during my annual pilgrimage to attend the Manchester Coffee Festival.

Talking of the excellent coffee, Forté serves Square Mile’s Red Brick on espresso, with the (in)famous Sweetshop blend as a second option, plus a regularly-rotating single-origin and decaf, all from Square Mile. There’s also tea, hot chocolate, pastries and a range of cakes/tray bakes from Manchester’s In Truffle We Trust.

November 2018: Extremely sad news! Forte has been sold to become a barber shop. I found out when I popped in to say hello to Dan on my annual visit to the Manchester Coffee Festival. It will close by the end of the month 🙁

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Grindsmith Deansgate

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A diamond light-bulb hanging over the counter in Grindsmith, Deansgate.When I go to Manchester for Cup North, it’s traditional that I start at least one of my days by visiting Grindsmith. Last year it was the original, the Pod on Greengate Square, which I help fund through Grindsmith’s successful Kickstarter campaign. Back then, the staff were talking excitedly about Deansgate, then the home of the Grindsmith Trike and soon to be the second permanent Grindsmith. Disappointingly (for me) it opened shortly after Cup North, so no prizes for guessing where I went on my return this year…

My initial reaction to the Deansgate Grindsmith is its size. A more traditional coffee shop setting than the pod, what it loses in intimacy, it more than makes up for in space, seating, an expanded food offering and gorgeous, brick arches. I know that might not appeal to everyone, but really, brick arches! How cool is that?

The same Grindsmith dedication to quality coffee is still there, though, with a single-origin from Heart & Graft as the house-espresso, plus decaf and a regularly-rotating guest espresso. There’s also a dedicated brew-bar, with Kalita Wave and Syphons on offer, plus bulk-brew filter for those in a hurry, and, of course, loose-leaf tea.

January 2020: Grindsmith has closed its Deansgate location, but there’s a new Grindsmith just up the street and around the corner on Bridge Street.

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Glasgow Coffee Festival 2015 Part II

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The poster for the 2015 Glasgow Coffee FestivalLast week, I brought you Part I of my round-up of this year’s Glasgow Coffee Festival. Although the Glasgow Coffee Festival by name (it’s held in Glasgow, after all), it’s more a celebration of Scotland’s growing specialty coffee scene, with plenty of contributions from further afield. It’s a lovely, one-day festival, held this year on 17th October. Small, laidback and friendly, there was plenty of time to talk and socialise, an opportunity to catch up with old friends and make some new ones.

In the imaginatively entitled Part I, I talked about the venue itself, the magnificent Briggait, looked at the vintage espresso machines and up-to-date hand-grinders that were on display, ran through all the coffee that I drank and reported back on my attempts to pull a shot on a Slayer.

In the even more imaginatively entitled Part II, I’ll run through all the Scottish roasters that I met, round up all the other roasters that I chatted to, and round-up everything else I found at the festival. However, before that, let me introduce you to Wil Freeborn…

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McCune Smith

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The words McCUNE SMITH GLASGOW in black typeface on white.Once upon a time, speciality coffee in Glasgow was generally a West End thing, but in the last couple of years, that’s changed, with pioneers such as the Riverhill Coffee Bar, Laboratorio Espresso and today’s Coffee Spot, McCune Smith, moving into the city centre and its immediate surroundings.

A little way east of the centre of Glasgow, you’ll find McCune Smith at the top (west) end of Duke Street, right on the edge of the University of Strathclyde, in an area that feels like it might have the estate agent tag of “up-and-coming”. In the words of its owner, Dan, it’s a sandwich bar which caught the coffee bug, teaming up with Glasgow’s very own Dear Green Coffee to turn itself into a lovely little spot.

In keeping with many places in Glasgow, McCune Smith marries excellent coffee with a very strong food offering (not surprising, given its sandwich-bar origins). However, with a nod to Glasgow’s Enlightenment history, McCune Smith is named after Dr James McCune Smith, the black intellectual and abolitionist who became the first African American in the world to hold a medical degree when he graduated from Glasgow’s Old College in 1837.

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Avenue Coffee, Great Western Road

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Avenue Coffee on the corner of Glasgow's Great Western Avenue and Barrington Drive.While in Glasgow for Caffeine Magazine in April 2014, I visited Avenue Coffee on the Great Western Road, where I met a young barista named Katelyn. Back then it had recently opened, was known as Avenue G, and, upstairs on the mezzanine level, a coffee roaster was being installed: Avenue G was about to start roasting under the name “Avenue Coffee”.

Realising that anything I wrote would be out-of-date before I even published it, I decided to wait until I’d had a chance to visit the roastery before writing up the Great Western Road branch. Fast-forward 18 months, the young barista had turned head-roaster, and I was finally able to accept Katelyn’s long-standing invitation to visit.  You can see what I made of the Avenue Coffee Roasting Company in the Meet the Roaster series; today I’m focusing on the coffee shop part of the operation.

Sitting on the corner of Barrington Drive, Avenue Coffee a lovely, sunlit spot, decked out in wood, brick and bare stone. Best described as the speciality coffee wing of Avenue G, it showcases the roastery’s output (plus guest roasters) with two options on espresso and three on filter, prepared through any of six brew methods.

May 2018: Avenue Coffee is no more, with both the roastery and the coffee shop having recently closed. The original Avenue G has also undergone some changes and is now known as Turadh.

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Glasgow Coffee Festival 2015 Part I

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The poster for the 2015 Glasgow Coffee FestivalTwo weeks ago I was in Glasgow for the second Glasgow Coffee Festival. Although called the Glasgow Coffee Festival (it’s held in Glasgow, after all), it’s more a celebration of Scotland’s growing specialty coffee scene, with lots of contributors from further afield as well.

Both in scale and atmosphere, it felt more like Cup North than the London Coffee Festival, laidback and friendly. There was plenty of time to talk and socialise, an opportunity to catch up with old friends and make some new ones. I was there for eight hours and still didn’t manage to get around all the stalls (as well as missing all bar one of the talks/workshops/masterclasses/ cuppings).

Some of that was deliberate, because I knew that I would be catching up with people either later that week (I’d set aside a day each to visit new coffee shops in Glasgow and Edinburgh) or a few weeks later at Cup North. Some however, I missed simply because I ran out of time… Despite this, I had a wonderful Glasgow Coffee Festival and will be back next year!

There was enough going on that I’m splitting my report into multiple parts, starting with this, imaginatively entitled Part I (and continuing with the equally imaginative Part II next week)…

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Dovecot Café by Stag Espresso

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A flat white in a classic white cup seen from directly above with a multi-leaf fern motif in the latte art.Dovecot Café, by Stag Espresso, is the in-house café of the Dovecot Contemporary Art Gallery and Tapestry Studio on Edinburgh’s Infirmary Street. It’s been around since 2011, making it an established player Edinburgh’s speciality coffee scene. Despite this, it seems to go under the radar, although I’ve heard consistently good things about it and its occasional pop-ups.

Like 6/8 Kafé’s latest venture inside Birmingham’s Millennium Point, this is speciality coffee in a mainstream setting and, as such, can only be applauded. If only all galleries/museums served coffee to this high standard. Oh well, we can dream.

Stag Espresso uses Lancaster’s J Atkinson & Co., which, as far as I know, is the only place in Edinburgh where you can get it. There’s no pour-over, just a solid espresso-based menu using Atkinson’s Archetype espresso blend, backed up with a wide range of loose-leaf tea from Edinburgh’s Anteaques, a good range of soft drinks and an outstanding cake selection.

Judging by the crowd that was there during my visit (hardly a table was unoccupied), it also does a roaring lunchtime trade, offering sandwiches and soup as the mainstays. Best of all, there’s that rarest of things in speciality coffee, full table service.

December 2015: Richard, of Stag Espresso, has sold up and moved on, with new ownership (Leo’s Beanery) taking over the cafe in the new year…

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The 2016 Coffee Spot Calendar

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Toby, the owner of Box Office Coffee, Bridport, behind the counter, seen through a mirror hanging on the wall. The counter contains a yellow Sanremo espresso machine and a cream EK-43 grinder.The Coffee Spot calendar has become something of a fixture, with this, the third year I’ve produced one. As before, the calendars will be professionally-printed, A4 in size and on glossy paper. Each month has a landscape, A4 picture from one of my favourite Coffee Spots of the last 12 months.

Just as in previous years, I’ll also be printing a very limited number of desktop calendars (I did 10 last year). However, as an added bonus this year, I’m also producing a limited edition Coffee Spot Lighting Calendar, with the help of my friend Sharon Reed, who has chosen most of the pictures (she let me pick three…).

Each calendar costs £12.00 (£15.00 for the lighting calendar), 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!

If you’re ordering from outside of the UK, then I’m afraid I have to charge more for postage and I 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.

December 2015: I’ve now sold out of everything except the normal Coffee Spot wall calendars. Check out my Calendar Update for the latest news.

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The Milkman

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The logo of the Milkman, on Edinburgh's Cockburn Street, a silhouette o the owner's grandfather, seen side-on, wearing a flat cap and smoking a pipe. It was taken from a photograph taken in 1938 at the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow.It is traditional that, when visiting Edinburgh, I pop into a just opened coffee shop. The trend started last year with Fortitude and continued with Cult Espresso. It’s therefore only fitting that Gary, from Cult Espresso, who I ran into at this year’s Glasgow Coffee Festival, was the one to put me onto The Milkman, the latest addition to Edinburgh’s thriving speciality coffee scene.

Conveniently located at the bottom of Cockburn Street, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the southern entrance to Edinburgh’s Waverley station, I popped in the following Monday, just a week after The Milkman had opened. It’s a tiny spot, having taken over from an old sweetshop which had the premises before it. Triangular in shape, it makes good use of the natural stone walls and amazing tiled floor to present a very pleasing interior.

The coffee is from Glasgow’s Dear Green, making it one of a handful of places in Edinburgh to use a Glaswegian roaster (and, arguably, the only speciality coffee shop to do so). Currently, there’s only espresso, but there are plans for a brew-bar in due course. Food is also initially limited to an impressive range of cake and toast/muesli for breakfast.

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Cup North 2015 Preview

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An espresso being pulled on Foundry's Londinium lever espresso machine at Cup North 2014.Two weeks from now (Saturday/Sunday, 7th/8th November), Cup North, the self-styled two-day Northern Coffee Party, will be back. Once again gracing the fair city of Manchester, Cup North’s moved slightly west to the Victoria Warehouse in Stretford. Cup North was one of last year’s highlights. I had an amazing time and am delighted that Cup North is returning for a second year. If you missed last year’s event and are wondering what it’s like, then this preview is for you.

As a veteran of the London Coffee Festival, I find that Cup North, while having a similar focus on speciality coffee, is on a very different, much more manageable and, dare I say it, friendly, scale. Not that the London Coffee Festival’s unfriendly, but its sheer size and the number of visitors crammed in, make it a very hectic affair.

In contrast, much like the Glasgow Coffee Festival, Cup North is more laidback, with time to talk and socialise, an opportunity to really get to know the various exhibitors. With weekend tickets for under £20 (including booking fee), or just over £10 if you only want to do a single day, it really is a bargain. Get your tickets now!

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