Archive for January, 2010

3 Ways to Improve Your Coffee for Less Than £20

Friday, January 29th, 2010

1. Grinder

Simple coffee grinder

A simple hand grinder can make a big differance

The key to great coffee is freshness and unfortunately pre-ground coffee just isn’t that fresh. Air is the world’s greatest thief and given its chance it steals valuable flavour from coffee. If you can smell coffee in the air, then you’re losing flavour from the cup.
 
Of course some loss is inevitable; there’s no stopping air. But you can minimize the affect by reducing coffees contact with the air. Whole beans are much better protected than grounds as they have a much smaller surface area. While whole, air only has contact with the outside of the bean. But once its ground into many tiny pieces air can penetrate nearly everywhere.
 
So if you grind just before you brew, you’re going to capture much more flavour in the cup. Now you don’t have to invest hundreds in a grinder to reap the results. A simple hand grinder (less than £20) is perfectly adequate for most brewing methods – filter, cafetiere, stove-top coffee maker. It’s only when you start brewing under substantial pressure (espresso) that you really need to invest more money.
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Posted in Brewing Tips | 3 Comments »

Help – My New Stove-top Leaks!

Monday, January 25th, 2010

From time to time, we’re contacted by customers thinking that their brand new stove-top coffee maker is faulty. They’ve put it on the hob for the first time and either: water, coffee or steam (or all three) has leaked from the join.

Loose washer on stove-top coffee maker

Loose washer - can be freely moved with your thumb

This problem is caused by the rubber washer, which acts as a seal between the two parts of the coffee maker. When brand new, this washer is really quite loose and doesn’t make a great seal. However, after a few brews the washer soon begins to tighten and the seal improves. In fact after a couple of months, they’re a job to get out.
 

So rather than being a fault, it’s just simply a case of breaking the coffee maker in. Like many things new (shoes, cars, audio equipment etc) they need a gentle warm up before they can perform at their optimum – a few gentle stretches before the sprint.

It’s just a shame that manufacturers, such as Bialetti, often neglect to mention this in their instructions. So if your coffee maker leaks, you naturally think it’s a fault.

To help you break in your new coffee maker, we came up with this handy guide: “Seasoning your Stove-top”.

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Posted in Brewing Tips | 2 Comments »

Is Instant Coffee Really Better for the Environment?

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

According to a recent report in New Scientist, instant coffee is better for the environment than filter coffee. Dr Dave Reay has calculated that filter coffee has a much larger carbon footprint than its instant counterpart.

I must say I’m a little confused with the report’s findings. Surely as instant coffee undergoes far more processes than filter coffee, before it reaches our cup, that it would require more energy to produce. Essentially, instant coffee is second-hand coffee: it’s brewed in a factory, then dehydrated before being aromatised and packaged, ready to be brewed again by the end consumer.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to read the original report (its not available for free on the internet), just an article on it in the Telegraph. So I’m not entirely sure what assumptions Dr Reay has based his calculations on. It would be interesting to know what he classes as an average cup of filter coffee.
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Posted in News | 2 Comments »

Galla Coffee – What’s with the Name?

Monday, January 18th, 2010

An Oromo womanOver the years we’ve been contacted about our name, ‘Galla Coffee’.  It seems we may have inadvertently offended some people, as Galla is actually a derogatory name for the Oromo people, a nomadic East African tribe.  One person even went as far as to say that our name was the equivalent to calling ourselves, ‘Nigger Coffee’.

It’s a fair assumption that a coffee company called Galla would be named after the Oromos.  The Oromos are often credited to be the first coffee lovers (not that they drank coffee, rather they mixed the beans with ghee to form a primitive energy bar), and they were widely referred to as Galla in many texts until more recently.
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Posted in History | 8 Comments »