Welcome to the world of speciality coffee…

This page is designed to offer those who would like some advice and a few directions before exploring our coffees alone. For those who know their coffees, you can use our quick guide to the coffees we currently have available.

How do I choose the beans that are right for me?

Firstly if you judge your coffee by how strong it is, throw away that perception, and while you’re at it throw away any coffee beans that have an indication of strength on the packet. In simple terms, the strength indicator is a ‘how burnt and bitter’ indicator and speciality coffee should be neither!

Strength can be used in terms of coffee but as an indication of the proportion of extracted coffee to water, so any variety of coffee can be made strong: ie a high proportion of coffee to water.

From now on we will talk about our coffee in terms of flavour and taste characteristics.

Speciality coffee taste characteristics

Tasting can become very complex (it gives us a chance to be obsessive, boring and drink more coffee) but we will keep it simple here.

In broad terms coffee has a few main characteristics:

  • body & mouth feel
  • acidity
  • sweetness
  • flavour
  • balance
  • aftertaste (not always mentioned but we feel it is important)
Coffee bean

Body and mouthfeel

This is the texture as it rolls around the mouth like treacle or on the other end of the scale the light clean feel of spring water.

Acidity

Now that’s not a negative, think of it in terms of fruit, from the clean crisp taste of lime through to ripe apple or cherries.

There can be some element of sourness within the acidity, think grapefruit, but we will keep it simple and just talk about acidity.

Sweetness

Is just that, the level of perceived sweetness.

Flavour is the subtle notes of the coffee that can be associated with know tastes and flavours, i.e caramel, cherry , chocolate, orange etc.

Balance

This is the all important ones from a roasters point of view.

How the flavours and characteristics blend together to complement each other, the more complex the coffee, the more skill it takes to get the best from the coffee.

Aftertaste

At its best it is that lovely silky flavourful taste that lingers in the mouth long after the coffee has been drunk, the “I could drink that again” taste.

Coffee bean

Once you start to enjoy the amazing tastes that speciality coffee offers there is no way back.