Coaltown Coffee - Home-Brewing Guides

Ideas on the Sustainability of Coffee

The speciality industry builds relationships on a foundation of knowledge sharing. It is driven largely by ideas of traceability, sustainability and ethics. As the second largest traded commodity i...

The Role of Milk in Coffee

By Ffion Davies   It might be a basic product, but milk in coffee is a contentious thing. A lot of coffee professionals frown upon consuming coffee with milk, arguing that it can mask the natural ...

Home Brewing Guide: Using Your Coffee Syphon

While syphon coffee brewers may have only recently become a trend, the method has been around since the mid 1800s when people started to experiment with vacuum and vapour pressures. Syphon brewers...

What is Specialty Coffee?

By Ffion Davies Coffee is one of the most widely traded commodities in the world. It is cultivated in over 70 countries, around 90% of these being developing countries. It therefore has the power ...

Experimenting with Brew Recipes and Grind Size

Brewing coffee is all about using water to dissolve soluble flavour compounds in coffee grounds. This process is called osmosis. 28-30% of coffee is soluble, but we should be aiming to extract arou...

Understanding Coffee Varieties

Kaffa in Ethiopia is widely considered to be the birthplace of Arabica coffee. Research suggests that travelling herders would mix the seeds of the plant with animal fats and spices in order to su...

Tasting and Describing Your Coffee

By Ffion Davies. Until recently for me, coffee drinking has rarely been about unpacking the unique flavours and personalities in the contents of my mug, but more about enjoying the experience and ...

Processing: What happens to your coffee beans before they reach our roastery...

By Ffion Davies. The speciality coffee industry is passionate about promoting traceability, transparency and ethical sourcing, and therefore places a huge emphasis on origin. It often provides a ...

Getting the most out of your cafetiere...

  By Ffion Davies. The cafetiere has been one of the most widely-used home brewing methods since it was modified and gained traction in the French coffee market in the late twenties. Its popularity...

Learning about CHEMEX Home Brewing - A beginners Guide

By Ffion Davies. With the increasing demand for great coffee at home, we have seen a rise in people asking how we feel about alternative brew methods, and how they differ from more popular, tradit...