Today it’s time to talk about the history of London coffee houses, from the very beginning to how coffee has evolved until it’s reached the third wave coffee and beyond. The London speciality coffee wouldn’t be the same of today without all that happened since the 16th century. Before getting through today’s coffee industry, we need to give some background. Let’s get back to the History of London coffee houses. The History of London Coffee Houses 17th Century Great Britain has been associated mostly as a nation of tea drinkers. … Read more

Today I walk you through one question: should you freeze your coffee? Well, it is not only about this, but also about why and how you decided to go for it. Alert: we are not going to talk about any pre-ground coffee or instant one but just about whole coffee beans. That is because (what we know so far) once we grind beans we have a small time available to use them. Just after 10-15 minutes, we have lost most of the volatile compounds that are responsible for getting the … Read more

Today, I’m not (unfortunately) going to talk about speciality coffee-related topic but about the Italian coffee culture. How is the coffee drinking culture in Italy? Even if questionable, Italian people has its own coffee culture no matter how it works in the rest of the world. Italian Coffee Culture: A bit of history The Italian coffee history seems to begin around the 16th century in Venice where it was the port in which the green beans were firstly imported and, not surprisingly, Caffè Florian was one of the first coffee … Read more

We baristas, we normally make/brew coffee as our first task all day long. After every brew, we take out the exhausted coffee and we make sure to clean/empty everything ready to brew again. That’s what every one of us does to deliver the best service possible at each customer. What we don’t focus though, is the leftover coffee, the exhausted coffee that we throw away every single time. A large amount of this latter goes into the bin instead of making a positive impact on the environment. If you didn’t … Read more

Coffee and Carbonic Maceration Process We learn and steal a lot from the wine world. Coffee grows and is processed likewise wine, as both come from a fruit. We learned that a mix of variables needs to be at their highest to produce the most out of the cherries such as altitude, soil and climate. That’s what is called terroir. But not also this has a huge impact when producing outstanding coffee. Just after the handpicking phase, we have mastered a new way of processing coffee. Recently over the past … Read more

You don’t need to be a bartender to make cocktails, especially if you make them at home or a party. And if you are a coffee lover you can make coffee cocktails too. You just need to be passionate about the art of mixing different spirits and ingredients with coffee, to highlight each one. How can we do that from scratch without any knowledge? Simply by following coffee cocktails recipes and by tasting them. I’m going to introduce some classic coffee-based cocktails recipes that are common over the world. But … Read more