Tag Archives: experiences

Discourse Coffee

Posted on by
3

The sign hanging outside Discourse Coffee in Sister Bay, Door County.If you haven’t worked it out already, I’m in America, the Midwest to be precise, taking a long road trip that began in Chicago, with me working my way up the west coast of Lake Michigan, stopping at Kickapoo Coffee in Milwaukee. Today’s Coffee Spot is from Door County, the peninsular that sticks out into the lake north/east of Green Bay. I went there to enjoy the countryside and the lake views, but much like Flagstaff earlier in the year, I found great coffee as well, this time in the shape of Discourse Coffee, which subtitles itself “a liquid workshop”.

Run by the friendly and enthusiastic Ryan since July 2017, Discourse will take you on a journey through coffee. As well as offering a standard(ish) espresso-based menu from the single-group Slayer on the counter, there’s batch-brew and pour-over using the innovative Phoenix 70 dripper from Saint Anthony Industries. However, the fun’s only just starting, since Discourse offers a regularly-changing cast of latte-based drinks with some very interesting flavour combinations. All this is served in a lovely, cosy, basement-like space that you really have to seek out, so the only people who are there are those who really want to be.

Continue reading →

London Coffee Festival 2015: La Cimbali Sensory Sessions

Posted on by
11

The front of La Cimbali's Coffee Notebook, given away as part of the Sensory Sessions at the London Coffee Festival.Welcome to the third of my detailed London Coffee Festival Saturday Supplements. If you want to know what I made of the festival as a whole, take a look at my round-up. In this series, I’ll be covering individual aspects of the festival. In the first two instalments I’ve looked at all the interesting coffee kit that I came across and written about my coffee experiences. Now it’s the turn of something quite special.

I’ve recently returned from the Pacific Northwest, where I had the pleasure of visiting the likes of Portland’s Either/Or, with its espresso and beverage flights, and Seattle’s Slate Coffee Roasters where I had an amazing, one-on-one coffee tasting flight. To follow that up, I want to tell you about one of the highlights of this year’s Coffee Festival, the excellent La Cimbali sensory sessions.

Located in the main hall, about halfway up on the left-hand side, La Cimbali has always brought innovative ideas to the London Coffee Festival, but this year it surpassed itself with its sensory sessions. These highlighted the impact of taste (and our other senses) on how we perceive coffee and on how the way we prepare coffee can radically change our perceptions.

Continue reading →

Coffee Tasting Flight at Slate

Posted on by
13

The sign from the window of Slate Coffee Roasters in Seattle: the words 'SLATE COFFEE ROASTERS', one word per lineEvery now and then something comes along that is so special that it immediately jumps out at you. Such is the case with the wonderful Slate Coffee Roasters of Seattle and its amazing coffee tasting flight. Slate is a coffee shop/roaster that has been going for a couple of years now and somewhere where the focus is more clearly on the coffee than anywhere else I’ve been. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the coffee tasting flight.

I’ve written about Slate as a Coffee Spot in its own right, while this Saturday Supplement is solely about a detailed description of the coffee tasting flight because I feel it deserves the attention. I’d already been forewarned by my friend Kate Beard about Slate and its amazing deconstructed espresso (more of which later), but it was the coffee tasting flight that jumped out at me, partly because it has no price attached.

Why? Because the coffee tasting flight is pretty much what you make of it and its charged accordingly. Think of it as a 45 minute, personal curated coffee tour. Want to taste the same coffee four different ways? No problem. Want to explore the differences between processing methods? You got it.

June 2019: My visit to Slate was one of my personal Coffee Spot highlights. I’m therefore deeply saddened to learn of reports of mistreatment of the staff.

Continue reading →

Birthday Coffee Tasting

Posted on by
4

The set-up at my Birthday Coffee Tasting at Bar des ArtsI celebrated my birthday last weekend by inviting a group of friends down to the closest thing I have to a local, Guildford’s Bar des Arts, for a coffee tasting. I’d originally been given the idea by Lee Hall of Matthew Algie when he did a similar demo at the Caffé Culture Show. There he put two different coffees through a pour-over filter and a Chemex and I was astounded by how different they tasted.

So, when thinking about how I wanted to celebrate my birthday, I could think of nothing better than surrounding myself with some friends and replicating this experiment. I approached Bradley of Horsham Coffee Roaster, who supplies Bar des Arts, and he provided three very different coffees for us to try. Meanwhile, I brought along my trusty Aeropress (and one of the guests, Richard, brought his down) to go with Bar des Arts pour-over filters and cafetiere.

So, the scene was set for an afternoon of good company, coffee tasting and cake (although, very disappointingly, I seem to have taken exactly no pictures of the cake!).

Continue reading →