Pressurised filter baskets rather disappointingly appear to be taking over the espresso machine market. Gaggia now ship them as standard; Ascaso put them on their ‘Versatile’ machines; not to mention all the small domestic appliance manufacturers who dabble in a bit of everything, including espresso machines. The worse thing is that often these manufacturers ‘pretend’ that these filters are in someway better than the standard ones. The same standard filters which are used by professionals in every (well I hope every) coffee shop throughout this land.
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How Pressurised Filter Baskets Work
September 10th, 2011Gaggia Espresso Machines and Coffee Grinders
August 31st, 2011
We are now stocking Gaggia espresso machines and coffee grinders. The prices are as follows:
Espresso Machines:
- Gaggia Baby £209.95
- Gaggia Classic £289.95
- Gaggia Baby Class £295.95
- Gaggia Baby Twin £369.95
Coffee Grinders:
- Gaggia MM £74.95
- Gaggia MDF £189.95
Tescoma Paloma Stove-top Espresso Maker
August 18th, 2011
We’ve taken stock this week of some new stove-top espresso makers from a company called Tescoma. Their Paloma coffee maker looks set to compete head to head with Bialetti’s stalwart the Moka Express. They both look pretty similar; they’re both made from aluminium; but the Paloma is cheaper in price and comes with an amazing 3 year warranty (as apposed to 1 year on most Bialetti models).
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Aerobie Aeropress
August 15th, 2011We are now stocking the Aerobie AeroPress in our webshop. The coffee maker is £21.95 and the Micro-filters are £3.95 for a pack of 350.
What is the AeroPress
For me, the AeroPress has to be one of biggest breakthroughs in coffee making history since Achille Gaggia gave birth to the modern day espresso machine. I’m not the only one to think these coffee makers are great, a group of coffee professionals where so inspired that they started the World AeroPress Championship (WAC).
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What’s a Water Footprint?
August 8th, 2011
I was reading an article over the weekend about how the coffee industry needs to address water usage. How they need to promote things such as responsible farming practices. One example given was of a group of farmers from Hama, Ethiopia. For years they had been discarding the pulp part of the coffee cherry in the local river. The pulp would then decompose giving off toxins which polluted local water supplies. It wasn’t until a team from Nestle met them and explained that the pulp shouldn’t be wasted, as it actually makes a very good compost, that they stopped.
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Coffee: The Greatest Addiction Ever
July 19th, 2011If you’ve not seen this already this is a great (and quite funny) video about caffeine.
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WBC Champion 2011 – Alejandro Mendez
June 6th, 2011Congratulations to Alejandro Mendez of El Salvador for wining the WBC. It seems a fitting end to the first WBC to be held in a coffee producing country that it was won for the first time by a barista from a coffee producing country.
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WBC – World Barista Championship 2011
June 1st, 2011
The World Barista Championship kicks off in Bogotá, Columbia tomorrow. It will be the first time in WBC history that a coffee producing country has hosted the event. It might also be the first time that the winner comes from a coffee producing country (Raul Rodas, from Guatemala came close last year finishing 2nd).
This year, I think it will be hard to predict a winner. Out of the top 12 baristas in last years competition, only 1 is competing again this year: Stefanos Domatiotis who finished 6th. So the competition looks pretty open.
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Coffee & Science
May 27th, 2011
A couple of interesting articles have appeared in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) magazine recently. They’re both well worth a read, although the first one may take a few attempts to understand!
No. 10 Has a Rancilio Silva Espresso Machine
May 26th, 2011Not sure whether the Silva got some use during the Obamas’ visit? Did David or Samantha serve espressos to their guests? I wonder it they have a matching Rocky too?
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