Sept 2015 - Try The New Eight Ounces Blend Today

Date Posted:5 September 2015 

balance balls

8 ounces blend


First up, let's talk about something that has been bubbling under the surface for around 18 months now - a new innovative blend called 8 Ounces.

OK, so what's with the kooky name - how's that going to work ?

Well, you may be surprised to learn that the majority of cafes - whether they rank in the top 10 of Beanhunter or Facebook, Broadsheet, etc. still make a worrying habit of churning out rubbish in their 8 oz cups.

Their Dine-in cups might be great or their 12 oz is a killer, but all too often they cut corners by doing the "splits" and treating their 8 oz customers like the great unwashed.

To address what we believe is a key hole in the market, we have engineered a coffee specifically to stand out from the crowd in the 8 oz.

Let me tell you, this is not easy. 

In fact, we developed our hugely popular Centre Way coffee specifically for the 12 oz market and that has been far easier than this 8 oz beast.

You see, it's all about balance in the cup and I see this as the key to winning in the future.

To read the full story about the creation of our 8 Ounce coffee blend, or to try it for yourself please follow this link to our product description (warning, it's full of coffee geek stuff). 8 Ounce Coffee Blend

yes or no

Optimising our portfolio

We hold a lot of different coffees.

This enables us to offer you a broad range via choice.

Well, that's what I tell my darling wife each week when the Invoices roll in, but the truth has been in the past I could not help but get excited by new coffees when they hit our shores.

There are many more coffees in our warehouse than what are listed in our store and quite frankly we have not been able to keep up listing all available coffees in our website.

One way of addressing that challenge was to create a generic product and rotate the lots we had of that varietal over a period, e.g. with Yirgacheffe we have 6 different lots and I run these on rotation.

Roasting this entire portfolio, with some of these coffees roasted 3, 4 or up to 5 times per week each, it's hurting us (and making a certain person very grumpy).

It's now taking us a long time each night to work through the lists and we are finding that some afternoons there is that look of desperation on our faces as we realise all the coffee from last night's roasting has all but gone and we may fall short again.

I tell my colleagues in the industry and they simply can't believe we turnover the coffee that fast - but it's true. 

There are days I wish it was easier like a cafe supply which runs on weekly cycles, but then of course that would become boring and mundane.

The problem this causes is we are running on a razor wire sometimes when it comes to predicting what to roast and when.

Recently, we have hit the wall on some coffees when there has been a rush over a morning period, e.g. Monsoon Malabar, Burundi and Kenya have been particularly popular recently whereas a roast may have lasted 3 days, it can be gone in a matter of hours now resulting in some customer orders that cannot ship that day - missing our critical KPI.

Scaling this out to a larger dimension is not something we wanted to do - roasting large batches less often works against the founding principles of high quality fresh roasted coffee.

We have made a tough call to consolidate some of our holdings of certain Single Origins by reducing the number of different lots. 

We have not eliminated any origins but simply run down some coffees that were hard to source - focusing on those beans that we think can be sourced without the related difficulties of purchasing the raw coffee 9 - 12 months worth in advance and at the same time deliver upon the promises of quality and value.

It's likely that some of our customers may be disappointed that their favorite bean did not make the cut, but please do not give up hope because the coffee journey we are on is running in one direction only - constant improvement.

Our promise is to always produce a better quality product than we did 3 or 6 months ago - it's sounds like an impossible feat but in our competitive industry you cannot stand still for very long at all.

We have new lots arriving every week - this keeps both our coffee and our enthusiasm levels extremely fresh !

best coffee beans

What we are enjoying at the moment....

Colombia Supremo Inza

My unashamed love affair with all things Colombian continues unabated.

Why Colombia then ?

Simply because they offer exceptional flavor without straying too far into the region of fruitti-tuitti.

3rd week of September 2015, a beautifully classic Inza arrives in the Supremo grade.

The link to the Supremo is here.

Nicaragua Diamond - sticky date pudding

There are moments when I think you can't possible drink any more caramel and toffee in a coffee. 

Almost every coffee has hints of these 2 flavors but then I drink the Diamond and it's like you rediscovered a new variety of caramel and toffee all over again. 

It's Moorish, just try and stop at one cup.

The link to Nicaragua Diamond (referred to as SHG) is here.