Like sand through an hour glass, so are the days…. oh wait. New Espresso Time!
As the temperature plummets, windows start to mist up, mountains of leaves roam the parks like wilderbeast and small dogs skitter on wet pavements in leopard print Gucci sweaters, the time for an espresso revision has finally arrived.
The cafe has been serving the final versions this week with much feedback, and the full launch is but a week away.
Stay tuned…
We’re branching out
We’ve been working on opening a new coffee cart in central london for a few months now, and the time has finally arrived! Climpson & Sons now have a coffee cart outside Match Bar on Margaret St, W1. Some of you already know that the cart we used at the Big Chill was a test run for the new equipment and it all went swimmingly. Matt has been working hard to finalise the operation and he’s now cranking out Climpson & Sons caffeinated craziness at a cracking pace for the 9-to-5′ers around Oxford Circus.
The Match Bar have been amazing in lending us their street frontage, and were eager to bring us into the West End to complement their divine cocktails. We’re open from 8am – 3pm, then the bar opens and we grab a comfy couch to relax in.
So if your in the area, drop by to say ‘Hi’ and grab a quick latte.
We’ve just launched 6 and 12 month coffee subscriptions in the webshop. We’ll send you a bag of our favourite single origin coffee at the start of the each month for either 6 or 12 months. We’ll choose the most interesting and varied coffees we have on offer to provide you with the best experience possible.
“What a great gift idea!” I hear you say, we agree!
Sign up now in the webshop.
We’ve sorted out the main page problems, all is now well in our online world.
What a week!
The Climpson & Sons stall rocked this year’s Big Chill festival as only we know how. Placed between Leon and the Castle Stage, we were in prime position to make the most of the best end the grounds. With some of the best food seen yet, and a wonderfully diverse mix of artists on stage, we stepped up to the challenge and smashed out top class coffee for the 33,000 festival go-ers. Open from 8am through till Midnight, those of you who have seen our Broadway Market cafe on a Saturday will know exactly how busy we were.
Needless to say our team performed professionally and tirelessly during the long festival hours and we are extremely proud of their efforts. Smashing out endless lines of delicious espressos and lattes to keep the fans jumping around till the wee hours of the morning. As well as helping the other stall holders stay awake during one of the craziest weeks we’ve seen in a while.
We’ve popped up a few photos of our setup for those of you who weren’t lucky enough to join us this year.
Always nice to have a little mention in Timeout and this week you can see us top of the list of London’s best coffee bars, on page 18. Interesting to note that most of the cafes mentioned are on the East side of London where nearly 5 years ago we opened our doors for the first time and introduced a new style of coffee to the streets of East London. Now several years on we very happy still to be recognized as a venue for great coffee in this ever growing London coffee scene.
We are packing our tents, a few Espresso machines, and a truck load of our freshly roasted coffee and heading to The Big Chill!!!!
This year we are teaming up with our friends at Leon and The East rooms will be serving our coffee on their stands. We are very excited to be supplying the coffee backstage at The East rooms looking after the artists, press and music industry guests. We can be found on their bar behind the main stage, serving coffee to run along side their breakfast and lunch menus. Check out what else these guys are up to here it should be a lot of fun.
Out the front, near the main stage we will be handling the coffees for Leon and you’ll be able to get one of our coffees to compliment their yummy food. For those of you just looking for a good old fashioned coffee hit, we will be banging out our coffee from our own stall which is situated nexted door to Leon.
The Festival runs Thursday to Sunday 06-09 August, Deer Park at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire.
Look forward to seeing you there.
Summer season is in full swing and iced coffee is on the menu once again.
We’ve been having a bit of a debate in the cafe on what’s the best way to make an Iced coffee and as with everything, everyone has their own recipe. Whether you use ice cream, whipped cream, sugar, or syrups we’d love to here if anyone has a great recipe that they wanted to share with us. We will give them all a go and use the best tasting one in our cafe.
The most important thing about storing coffee is to make sure that it is kept in the correct environment. Firstly, lets dispel the myth that you should store it in the fridge or freezer. Coffee should be stored in a cool, dry place! If you really want fresh coffee, buy a grinder! The best coffee is ground just before use. Coffee is extremely sensitive and should be treated as any other fresh product, it should be used and bought in smaller quantities in order to keep it fresh.
There are three main ways of preparing coffee in your kitchen at home. The cafeteire or plunger, stove top and espresso. All of these different methods require a bit of trial and error before you will be able to get exactly what you want.
If you have a home grinder, it will make things easier because you will be able to work out which grind works best for your coffee. Espresso requires the finest grind, then a little bit coarser for the stove-top and then a relatively course grind for the plunger.
It is really important to make sure that everything you use for home preparation is clean and in order to do this you need to clean it properly after use, maybe even buy some commercial coffee cleaner. A dirty apparatus means dirty coffee, and that ain’t cool.
Like we said earlier it is important to make sure that the coffee is fresh, grind it as you need it and you will be well on the way to making the perfect home brew.
Make sure that the water you are using is not straight out of the kettle. Boiling water burns the sensitive little beans. If the water is not hot enough then you won’t be able to extract the full variety of flavours from your coffee. Commercial machines generally push water through the ground coffee between 92 and 94 degrees centigrade. So if the kettle has just boiled open up the lid and let it sit for a minute or five.
The last main thing about getting the coffee right at home is getting your grind right. If it’s too coarse you won’t be able to gain the full flavour from your product, too fine and it will be slush, and on an espresso machine you may find that it won’t push through at all.
As with wine, coffee has seasons, and supplies are always limited. As with most of our lineup, the time has come for some coffees to retire and make room for the new kids on the block.
Our Peru CEPICAFE is almost gone, to be replaced by another Peru co-operative.
We are temporarily sold out of Sumatra Mandheling, but don’t worry, the truck with the new coffees arrives next week.
We have a new coffee in the webshop and the cafe for you, Brazil – Daterra Monte Cristo, a fantastic coffee from the famous Daterra farm. We’ve also got a Guatemala – Antigua Los Volcanes on the truck.
In the mean time we have plenty of our other stock ready to roast and ship for you, so happy drinking!
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