Letter to Father Christmas
It’s been a pretty intense run-up to the end of the year with work keeping my anxiety levels pretty high and an ever-increasing to-do list seeming to get ever further away. But we did manage to sit down at the weekend and write our letters to Father Christmas, and I thought I’d share mine with…
9-bar, finely ground bean water
Sounds nice doesn’t it? No? How about medium-dark roasted coffee beans grown at high altitude, finely but consistently ground into a light powder, tamped tightly into a ~18g ‘puck’, pre infused with near-boiling water and then perfectly extracted by (optimally) high pressure water for roughly 30 seconds to make a tiger-striped, aromatic, crema-topped velvety 40g…
New Job
Thoughts on a first day Well… not quite the start to my first day in a new job I was hoping for. I arrived at Slough train station in plenty of time only to find that all trains running between London Paddington and Reading were suspended. Roughly 90 mins later I was finally on a…
Hello Dark-roast my old friend…
So I revisited an old friend this week. Not a full-on re-acquaintance by any means; more like trying something new with one that wears the same aroma as one who used to be very close. I made sure to reduce the temptations – nothing too sweet. Certainly not the hardcore buzz or hit I used…
Daddy Grizzle and Little Pip
Oh its the sweetest thing…. Piglet has started role playing and, luckily for me, he has adopted me as his sidekick. In truth, the characters Daddy Grizzle and Little Pip are from a book we borrowed from the library a few weeks ago. It’s called ‘I love you Daddy Grizzle” and it’s a subtle celebration…
Pirates, ice and hot chocolate
Yo ho ho! Quick person count: 1, 2, 3… All present and correct after the snowy cold weather. Actually, we didn’t get it too badly. A few centimetres of snow when we woke up on Friday morning but nothing worse than that. Even my most pessimistic planning couldn’t fully justify me not going to work.…
Costa now does Almond Milk
New Year, new surprises!! As part of their 2019 menu, it appears that Costa Coffee now do additional dairy-free milks, including almond milk! Hurrah! Of the three big coffee chains (I drink quite a lot of coffee, you might have noticed!), Costa was probably already my favourite even though they didn’t previously offer a milk…
Coffee in Bath – The forum
This blog is in danger of becoming a tour of the UK’s independent coffee shops that sell Almond Milk lattes! But again, just after Christmas, we found ourselves in a city centre frantically searching Google for places to get a suitable hot drink. The city, this time, Bath. Our home for about 4 years when…
Coffee Culture in Guildford
So we found ourselves in Guildford at the weekend. A little bit out of our way but we’ve been having trouble getting Piglet’s hair cut. It’s been getting longer and longer to the point that it literally loops out and then straight back into his eyes. He’s even learnt the phrase “my hair’s in my…
Foggs in Windsor
There aren’t many non-big-chain coffee shops in Windsor. It’s crying out for something like the Boston Tea Party we had in Bath and Bristol, or Brew and Brownie as we recently found in York. I can’t help thinking that if someone was to tap into the barista-quality coffee market here; there’d be queues round the…