The Huila harvest is here, at the price we promised in July
4 min read
Forty sacks came off a lorry from Rotterdam on Thursday. Maksim roasted the first batch on Friday at 7:00, and we tasted it together on Saturday.
Two breakfasts from home on the autumn menu
2 min read
Every weekday at 6:45 one of us makes a tortilla. At weekends the other fries syrniki until they run out, which is usually by 11:00.
Cafetière coffee for six without the sludge
2 min read
60 grams of coffee and a litre of water make six good cups. The sludge at the bottom is optional.
Twelve free places at our cupping table
2 min read
On the first Saturday of every month, at 10:00, twelve people stand around our table with a spoon each and slurp. Nobody needs to know anything about coffee.
Decaf that tastes like coffee
2 min read
The caffeine in Zhuravel was taken out with a by-product of sugarcane grown a few valleys from the farm. It still tastes of Huila.
You asked for a darker espresso. Meet Grulla
2 min read
Under 'Why we roast light', Callum wrote that he wanted something darker for his morning flat white. He was right that we owed him an answer.
Getting a good cup out of the moka pot in your cupboard
2 min read
Every Spanish kitchen has a cafetera italiana, and my mother's has been on the same gas ring since 1991.
Four months from keys to coffee
2 min read
Henk handed us the keys on 28 November 2023. The till took its first 612 euros on 16 March 2024. In between, almost everything went wrong once.
The lot we turned down, and the one we bought
2 min read
Eight cups on the table, no labels, three of us with spoons. Inés and I write our scores without looking at each other's.
We stored one bag four ways for four weeks
2 min read
One 250 g bag, split four ways: the bag it came in, a glass jar on the shelf, a tin in the cupboard, and the freezer. Four weeks later we tasted all four blind.
The kettle above the machine
2 min read
Someone asks to buy the red kettle about once a week. It does not work, and it is not for sale.
Back from Huila, with this year's price
2 min read
We agreed this year's price on a veranda near Pitalito, before a single cherry was picked: 4.40 US dollars a pound.
Meet Ade, who opens the door at seven
2 min read
The key turns at 7:00. By 7:20 the batch brewer is on, the first playlist is chosen, and Bulba has found the warm spot under the bench.
Brew a clean pour-over at home with three numbers
2 min read
15 grams of coffee, 250 grams of water at 94 degrees, three minutes. Get those right and most other advice stops mattering.
I grew up on torrefacto. Here is why we roast light
2 min read
In my aunt's café-bar in Zaragoza, the beans were roasted with sugar until they shone. I drank it for twenty years and thought that was what coffee tasted like.
Thirty-one viewings and a flat tyre
2 min read
For fourteen months, a list hung on our fridge: a corner with morning light, room for a roaster, a window bench, rent under 2,500 euros. We found every item on it, just never in the same building.
A Belarusian and a Spaniard open a coffee shop in Oost
3 min read
One of us was born next to a marsh in southern Belarus, the other 2,300 kilometres away in Zaragoza. Every autumn the same flock of cranes flies over both of our home towns, and that is where our…