Coffee wankers thread

Just had a really nice flat white at the Vintry in Bristol (visiting for the day), made me realise that there needs to be an Untapped for coffee.

Last weekend Square Mile Roasters hosted essentially an open day of the roastery. I was due to go on a free tour with my friend, but he bailed out. When I arrived they said they had one place on their Come Roast With Us tour, so I signed up for the two hour tour.

The tour effectively took you on the entire production journey, from roasting the beans all the way through to the packaging department.

So we started off with a demonstration of how they roast beans on their oldskool roaster. It's like a 50 year old machine, but they refurbed and modded it in 2008 and have been keeping it going since then. They have a much larger machine as well, but they use both daily. They roasted two batches of beans over the course of about 30 mins and talked through all the different stages, how they tweak the heat and timings to tweak the flavour profiles etc. It was pretty cool.

Next, we had a cupping session where we blind tasted the beans both individually and then as a variety of blends with different ratios. As a group we provided our tasting notes. It was particularly interesting in the second stage when mixed the two blends; there were three ratios 50:50, 63:33 and 33:63. I was really surprised at how different they tasted between the 50:50 blend and the other two. Even the 50:50 blend was way different to the previous cupping of the individual coffees.

In our group, the 50:50 blend was most popular (which I also voted for, go me) so it was chosen for packaging up and we would take home a bag. Before that, we all came up with names for the blend. The winning name was Earl Grape, which was inspired by the group tasting notes of Earl Gray, Grape and Peach.

Next, we went to the packaging department and got given an empty SQM coffee bag plus a label with "Earl Grape" on it and got to use the industrial packaging machines. The first one involved sleeving the bag over a giant tube and then using a footpedal to shoot 351.3g of beans into the bag. Then we put the bags into a little heat sealing machine to close it and finally popped a little sticker on. Job done. We also packaged some Red Brick which was sent out to customers on the Monday.

All in all it was really fun and a very slick operation as you might expect from a Coffee Jesus operation. They had a little waiting area with a free coffee stand. I sampled all sorts, coming away with a bag of the Decaf2 as well. We drink a fair amount of the stuff and this was really nice. I also later caved in (after initially baulking at the 27 quid price tag) and bought a bag online of the La Pradera which tasted a lot like Blueberries. My fave of the day. Annoying that I seemingly have expensive taste buds in that regard.

They said they are planning on doing more of these events. I'd highly recommend if you are interested in behind the scenes of the coffee world.

Ooof, on my mobile. Some pics there. Will edit later.

Ok, edited.

Awesome stuff & thanks for sharing the photos. That would be a great day out!

Did you meet coffee jesus or did he not show up?

Cool pictures! I’d like to do something like that myself as I’ve already been on things like brewery tours and enjoyed them as even though the process is largely the same, it’s fun to compare different places in terms of the things they concentrate and double down on. The closest I have come to that is going down to roasteries to buy beans.

I’m heading up to Glasgow next month to go to the coffee festival there, hope to buy some beans and some knick-knacks for my setup. I want a spray bottle and a dosing cup but I’m holding off in case I can get one with a Dear Green or Tin Donkey logo on or something.

New beans from my sub. Thankfully, not a bag of earl grape! Sorry Tomo!

I’ve got that bag!

Not got to drinking any yet, just finishing some red brick. Probably be on it mid week.

Just had a yum coffee. I can't have coffee much anymore because it makes me jittery, which is sad as the coffee here is fucking great.

/starts vibrating

Top tier work from him. Very good fun.

Just made an espresso tonic with some cheapo Nespresso knockoffs. Surprisingly tasty with some ice and a slice. Added bonus of it looking like a beer with a good head, if you put the coffee in first.

My regular place is doing an espresso tonic as part of their summer drinks menu. I keep meaning to try it, but every time I go in, the weather's on the 'dull and overcast' side... so I end up ordering an Americano instead.