As many of you know, for our house blend we use 200 Degrees’ Brazilian Love Affair coffee beans.  This fabulous roast is the very foundation of most of the espressos, caffe lattes, Americanos, cappuccinos and flat whites we make for you.

We order small batches from 200 Degrees’ Nottingham roastery, usually on a weekly basis.

Is this because a) we really need to manage our cashflow? or b) because we really care about freshness?

It’s a little of a), but a lot of b).

You can ask us when your coffee was roasted, it’s easy to tell you because 200 Degrees stamp the roast date on every pack we buy.  The coffee delivered to us today (9th May) was roasted last week.

You don’t need to ask us when your coffee was ground – if you did we wouldn’t hear you anyway over the din of our noisy (but highly effective) Cunill burr grinder, because we grind the coffee just for your drink.  Ground coffee is more exposed to the air, meaning it quickly loses its freshness, so it’s important to grind it as late in the process as possible.

Freshness is a key factor in how good our coffee tastes: yes, we take care over brewing each shot, but that counts for little if the coffee isn’t super-fresh to start with!  Older coffee tastes flatter and lacks roundness of flavour.  You’ll know the difference if you’ve sampled our coffee and we believe you’ll come back for more of it…