“IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a good cup of coffee”
Today was National Freelancers Day, and we didn’t just want to mark the day with a free day of coworking – we wanted to show our members and their visitors what this space is about…a great community with awesome coffee!
We actually have two coffee suppliers here at The Guild, Extract provide the coffee for our bean to cup machines and Dusty Ape provide the coffee for our Filter machine. Today we invited Evan from Dusty Ape, Wiltshire’s only coffee roaster to stop by at The Guild and give a short talk on you guessed it COFFEE.
First up Evan showed us all some roasted and pre-roasted green beans, from what he was saying we could all have a go roasting off the green beans at home in a frying pan…they wouldn’t make a good cup of coffee however. I’m not much of a coffee expert and it was interesting to see the bean it is original form and to understand the steps necessary to get it to what you see in your local coffee shop. I guess the best analogy I could make would be to compare it to seeing a bar of cadburys and a coco bean.
We then heard more about the flavours of coffee, its a common misconception that the darker the bean/roast the stronger the coffee. The darker the roast the more bitter it tastes, you find that a lot of the chains use a darker roast. Personally I suspect this is so they can sell more syrups and milk based drinks therefore upping their margins! There is a growing trend amongst the independent retailers to use a lighter roast (number 6-7 on the chart)
Chart showing how the roast effects the colour and the bean.
You can also see how different beans can give off different flavours, according to Evan there are more flavours in coffee beans than in grapes and wine.
After hearing about the process of the bean and also a bit about the history of coffee and roasting we then got on to the best bit…the tasting! Evan had brought with him a pot of filter coffee using beans from Malawi which had hints of lime to it. I couldn’t really taste the lime, but as I said I’m no expert but it was a lovely cuppa joe!
It was a great talk and fantastic to find out more about one of our suppliers – we even had a couple of sales and I think early Christmas present buying…who knows you may find a bag of Dusty Ape coffee in your stocking this year!
