On Sunday 9th February we’ll be heading down to Birmingham where Gareth will take part in this year’s UK Barista Championships. The format of the competition requires the barista to produce 4 espressos, 4 cappuccinos and 4 of their chosen signature drinks to a panel of judges; throughout the competition another group of judges will…
BUF Remera
We’re delighted to be able to offer BUF Remera again this year. A popular choice last season, it’s now back online and will be served by some of our customers in the coming weeks. We’re huge fans of coffee from Rwanda and as well as being a pleasure to drink, there’s an inspiring story behind…
La Esperanza
This is the first coffee we’ve used from Nicaragua, and although it’s late in the season, it’s holding up very well on the cupping table. Until recently farmers from Nicaragua have not been able to export their coffee individually as single estates. In the past coffees were branded by big export mills and farms lost…
Looking back and pondering the future
As we enter the last few hours of 2013 it seems an appropriate time to look back over the past 12 months and to consider how far we’ve travelled as a business. It’s also a nice time to think a little about what the future might hold. We began 2013 with a determination to improve…
Stages in Roasting
We though it might be a nice idea to outline the coffee roasting process, giving you an idea of how the bean changes throughout the roast. We begin by charging the roasting drum – in other words we heat it to our desired starting temperature. We have a digital probe inside our roasting drum and…
Enjoying our coffee at its best
The approach we take to dating our coffee is a little different than you might find on, say, a bag of coffee purchased from the supermarket. Our philosophy behind this is to provide the consumer with enough information to enable them to enjoy our coffee at its best. To do this we include both a…
Sourcing coffee
We often get asked how we source our coffee, whether or not we source directly from farms or whether our coffee is Fairtrade. The following post aims to outline the process we go through when selecting coffees. We can probably condense the decision making process down to four key questions: 1. Is the coffee in…
All about decaf
We often get asked about decaf coffee. Questions range from ‘Is it any good?’ to ‘How do they decaffeinate coffee?’ The following is an attempt to explain a little bit more about decaf in general, an in particular about the decaf we use. There are three main ways by which coffee is decaffeinated. The first…
CN Group Business Awards 2013
Last week we became proud winners of the CN Group New Business of the Year award, and enjoyed a wonderful evening at the Rheged Centre, where we were wined and dined. These are the kind of events that we generally don’t frequent so it was actually good fun to be there, and winning the award…
Carvetii Espresso Bar: the line-up
Over the course of the Taste Cumbria weekend we’ll be serving coffees from our Espresso Bar. Here you’ll be able to enjoy your favourite espresso based drinks from the cappuccino to the flat white, and the latte to the piccolo. Joining us on the espresso bar will be guest baristas from our wholesale customers. Some…
The Carvetii Pop-Up Espresso Bar
As I type this post, Angharad is busy roasting a batch of our seasonal espresso blend. This batch is going to remain at the roastery for the next 10 days or so after which it will be nicely settled and ready to be served on our pop-up Espresso Bar during this year’s Taste Cumbria Event….
A grinder or a set of scales?
In recent weeks there has been a degree of buzz in the coffee world about some research carried out by Ben Kaminsky, a grinder and the concept of ‘coffee shots’. This all followed a lecture by Ben in August, which we were unable to attend. However, we’ve kept a close eye on the resulting online…