Monthly Archive for
May 2009

From our Urban Coffee HQ

We have decided on our final logo. It will be dark brown with a splash of pink.

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

The British public have been brained washed into asking for espresso coffee so it’s either a Latte or a Cappucino. Now if you asked this same average person what is the difference between a Latte and a Cappucino they could not tell you. Stories like Baristas being asked for a black Latte are very common. So this tells us that the marketing of the big high street coffee brands has worked but has failed to educate the consumer at the same time.

Well we want to change this one cup at a time with our coffeeducation scheme. Starting with filter coffee, it’s not something your parents did in the 80′s that has been put to bed in the history books. Filter coffee is making a return in the form of single cup filters. There are a few coffee shops selling single cup filters but not very many.

We looked around for a filter stand to allow us to do this but there is only one manufacturer and they are in the US. So we designed one ourself and had it fabricated. We can serve upto 10 single cup filters at the same time with this stand.

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

HSBC – No
Lloyds – No
Barclays – Maybe but service is terrible

Well after 6 phone calls and a visit to a branch HSBC said they are not lending to retail food and drink businesses. Lloyds said send us a business plan and we will review it, that was 3 weeks ago and no acknowledgement they have received it and they don’t return our calls.

So Barclays was recommended and on the initial visit to the branch they were very professional and helpful. I was even given a business card of the business manager who would see me with their actual phone number on (wow). Anyway I turned up yesterday for the scheduled meeting to be told that she was off ill and would I like to re-schedule, not sorry we didn’t call you to let you know or sorry she is ill but x will see you instead. I declined an alternative meeting because if they can’t get the basics right what chance do they have with the rest of it.

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

One thing we want is the drama of making coffee so what better than a Brezzera espresso machine.

The history of espresso coffee starts in 1901. An Italian named Luigi Bezzera, an owner of a manufacturing company in Milan, sought out a way to reduce the coffee break times of his employees.Bezzera had the idea to introduce pressure to the coffee brewing process, reducing the time needed to brew. He called his new machine the “Fast Coffee Machine”. Espresso means “fast” in Italian.

We have bought a Bezzera Eagle brass espresso coffee machine (2 group) that will need a lot of polishing, but boy does it look good.

This machine looks like no other and really sets us aside from the other high street coffee outlets. At the moment the trend in places like Starbucks is to use bean to cup machines which means your staff no longer need any skill, it’s all in the initial setup of the machine. We feel this is getting further away from the drama, skill and art of making coffee hence we purchased the Eagle.

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

Yesterday we visited a Roastery in Sheffield, there are less than 50 roasters of any size based in the UK. This roastery has been family run and roasting coffee since 1879, Simon Bower (pictured) is the current owner.

Simon has green beans bought in from all over the world and stored ready for roasting. They currently roast in 20kg batches and only roast to order so the coffee is alway fresh. Once roasted it is rested for 24hrs then packaged and shipped directly to customers.

Youri was also on hand so we could try some different espresso blends for the Urban Coffee Company house blend. The jury is still out on this so we will need another session to come up with a blend that will work for all our customers.

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

Union Hand Roasted sent us some samples of their coffee to try which was very nice of them.

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

We want as many of the products as possible to be produced locally and delivered fresh each day, but we were struggling to find a local bakery that could deliver daily. You will be amazed how few traditional bakers there are left. Then someone suggested we try Wedges Bakery in Hockley Heath. http://www.wedgesbakery.co.uk/

So I took a trip out there to see what was on offer and was amazed; this place is in the middle of nowhere yet there was a constant stream of customers coming into the shop (a great sign). The bakery is attached to the shop and they make all sorts of breads, rolls and cakes. It all looked and smelt wonderful so I am sure it will taste just as good.

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

Here are the two colour options for the logo. The orange/brown is very warm and welcoming. The pink is softer and perhaps more ‘classy’.

Thoughts?

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

I was asked the other day how do you get the caffeine out of coffee to make it decaf but I wasn’t sure so I looked it up.

Standard coffee beans have between 0.8 percent and 2.5 percent caffeine depending on there origin and type.

There are several processes for decaffeinating coffee but the main methods are the water and direct method:

Water method

The water method is typically called the swiss water method because it was invented by the Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Company. The green coffee beans are soaked in hot water to remove the caffeine and compounds responsible for much of the flavor of the coffee flavor. The first batch of coffee beans is then discarded, while the caffeine is stripped from the solution by means of activated carbon filters. This leaves a solution saturated with flavor compounds, which is then used to soak a new batch of decaffeinated green coffee beans. The principle of water procesed decaf coffee is that the solution is saturated with all components soluble in water other than caffeine. Therefore, only the caffeine in the bean is allowed to escape whereas the rest of the compounds are in equilibrium. Unfortunately, the flavor of batches is intermixed since the chemically saturated solution is used repeatedly.

The process takes approximately 10 hours resulting in green beans that are 99.9% caffeine-free.

Direct method (or Dichloromethane)

In the direct method the coffee beans are first steamed for 30 minutes and then repeatedly rinsed with either methylene chloride (Dichloromethane/DCM) or ethyl acetate for about 10 hours. The solvent is then drained away and the beans steamed for an additional 10 hours to remove any residual solvent. Sometimes coffees which are decaffeinated using ethyl acetate are referred to as naturally processed because ethyl acetate can be derived from various fruits or vegetables, but because of the impracticality of gathering natural ethyl acetate, the chemical used for decaffeination is synthetic.

Even after the process almost all brands of decaffeinated coffee still contain some caffeine. Caffeine free beans were discovered in 2004 so over the next few years you could see these processes die out at more naturally decaffeinated beans are grown.

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From our Urban Coffee HQ

This week we have been trying out flavoured coffee’s as an alternative. Most high street coffee outlets flavour their coffee’s using syrups which in our opinion makes the coffee really really sweet. For some that is fine and is what they are used to but others are put off.

The alternative to syrups is to actually flavour the beans themselves, so the roasted beans are put into a gently rotating drum and the flavour oils are sprayed under high pressure onto the beans.

The result is a bean that has a very strong smell of the added flavour.

We will be serving a flavoured filter coffee of the day at the Urban Coffee Company.

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