Experience coffee with Guest Espresso!

Rainy days may be quieter….but they also mean we have more time to chat coffee with our customers – and we’ve had some brilliant chats today! Our guest espresso is a Ugandan Natural, and truly an experience coffee. It’s big bodied, super sweet with tasting notes of passionfruit & blueberry which we love just as espresso in all it’s glory or as a flat white.

Our guest espresso is just 30p extra and our baristas will advise on which drink it is best suited. For that 30p extra customers can try a £30-£50 p/kg coffee (most cafes it’s £13-£18 depending on quality) which they may never have experienced or purchased a bag of. They are single origin which means you get really wild flavours which are easy to taste, as opposed to regular blends which tend to have more generic familiar flavours like caramel & chocolate.

Today was a joy with customers interacting together over the unique taste, most loving, some not so much – but the point is that it sparks conversation, learning and an experience. That one little coffee brings people together in conversation, and leaves them still thinking about it hours later. It truly is amazing how the cafe can quickly develop that living room feel with strangers engaging – with just an espresso….this is the community power of a great cafe and great coffee.

Ok…. i know i make it sound like when you’ve given their child their first perfectly ripe strawberry…but you get my drift haha! With the cost of living crisis we all have to find some joy in the little things.

The unique flavours of guest espresso isn’t just great for the customers though, it provides a brilliant learning opportunity for the team. A single origin bean has a much smaller window than a blend to get that sweet spot – so the barista has to know what they are doing, design the right brew recipe, be on top of their dosage & extraction times.

The team learns quickly how much they influence the taste of the coffee, and how a badly trained barista can destroy sometimes 200hrs of effort from the producer to the roaster in just 30 seconds (we’ve all had that coffee which is so bitter/sour that the table next to you wonders if you are practicing for a gurning competition). It teaches them to really appreciate their product & training. The most fun though is seeing them explore their sensory skills and seeing the satisfaction when they start to be able to distinguish different flavours and develop sensory skills which is something most of them never thought they’d be able to do.

If you want to get in on the action just ask the team and they would love to tell you more, start you on your specialty coffee journey! Thanks to Thomsons Coffee for another high quality, beautiful coffee.

Lisa