Back in the day when my fingers worked they created blogs, blogs as far as the eye can see, great big beautiful blogs……
Now they work intermittently and ones will appear occasionally, in the meantime, enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Making Anoxic Accessible: A Simplified Fermentation Technique
This article first appeared and is reproduced here with the kind permission of Standart magazine, You should pick up issue 35 to see this in print alongside articles from Dr…
13th August 2024
Feedback for Impact: Putting QC to good use.
This blog first appeared as a series for the Raw Material newsletter and has been slightly altered for publishing here. Quality Control. It’s intricately built into the fabric of speciality…
18th July 2024
Making Connections: an interview with The Cupping Club
Possibly the best thing about working in the coffee industry is the connections it creates. Most of the time they are fleeting and often seem inconsequential, but over the years…
8th October 2022
The Lies We Tell Ourselves: The True Cost of Ethics and Morals
“The ethics of excellence are grounded in action – what you actually do, rather than what you say you believe. Talk, as the saying goes, is cheap.” – Terry Pratchett One of the great issues…
18th September 2022
Put Up Or Shut Up
Yeah I quoted myself, what of it? Of course when you put something like that down in writing the trick is to follow through with action, to Put Up or…
1st November 2021
The Lies We Tell Ourselves: The Transparency Fallacy
Provocative title No? Our lives are full of lies, white ones, blatant ones designed to deceive, lies by omission….. They are it seems, a part of the human condition…
9th July 2021
Intentional Safety
The idea of Guest Rights isn’t just something from fantasy novels, they have existed for as long as recorded history. The ancient Greco-Romans knew it as Hospitium, the divine duty…
28th May 2020
If You Open It, They Will Come
There is a surprising amount of depth in the movies of Kevin Costner, sure they are about (mostly) the triumph of the seemingly unremarkable white dude in the face of…
13th May 2020
When the Lockdown Breaks
Rumours spread like wildfire, or perhaps like a novel coronavirus. Either way the uncertainty of these times leaves us searching for information wherever we can find it, and a lot…
8th May 2020
Marginal Gains: Flow and Soak
Up until now the Marginal Gains posts have been about the mechanics of brewing, how to maximize your extractions and push the limits of your flavour ceiling. This one is…
22nd September 2016
The Truth About the 4th Wave
We humans are funny creatures, we live in a constant state of dichotomy between the future and the past, always chasing the new yet with one eye constantly on what…
28th June 2016
Framing the Pitch
Service is key in speciality coffee (as i’m sure you all know), get it wrong and we risk alienating a potential customer forever, get it right and well, you get…
18th May 2016
Marginal Gains – It’s All In The Mix
UPDATE 20/5/16 – This post has been updated following feedback from Greg Scace. His original piece of work for a talk at Toby’s Estate in Australia and contains the theories…
18th May 2016
Are We in the WBC’s Juiced Era?
“No. I don’t have to [use steroids]. I mean, I’m a good enough ballplayer as it is. I don’t need to be any better. I can’t get any better at…
2nd May 2016
The Strada Chronicles Pt4: Where We Stand Now
I’ve been using and engineering on the Strada EP for a while now, if you’ve read my previous posts on what it’s like as a machine to use day-to-day then…
29th April 2016
Stagnation, Maturation and Finding Your Place in the Industry
Back in November I was honoured to give one of the Tamper Tantrum talks at CupNorth. You can watch it here if you’ve not seen it yet. At the time,…
22nd April 2016
Marginal Gains: On Pressure and Flow
If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ll know two things, 1) I love an analogy and 2) pressure and flow in espresso is something that’s been on my…
6th January 2016
Marginal Gains – Do Region or Process Have an Impact on Your Extraction %?
Alright, this is a quick hit so buckle up. The question was asked of me this week, are natural processed coffees more soluable than washed? They asked because we have…
25th November 2015
Semantics Matter – The Pocket Science Myth
Before we get started, let’s define some things; Science: The systematic study of the nature and behaviour of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and…
29th October 2015
Marginal Gains – Extraction: Nomenclature and Context
Extraction is still big news in coffee, has been for the past 50 years, don’t see a reason for it to stop any time soon. But we really need to…
22nd October 2015
Marginal Gains – The Extraction Power Rankings (Updated!)
We take a break from our usual considered programming for something a little different; Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the inaugural Extraction Power Rankings!!!! First off a few ground rules,…
20th July 2015
Marginal Gains – Maximising Extraction Through Flow & Pressure
No area of coffee making lends itself quite as well to the theory of Marginal Gains as extraction yield. An inordinate amount of time from some of the most innovative…
1st June 2015
Marginal Gains – Living with the Pergtamp
This is the first in a series of posts looking at the Marginal Gains we can make in improving what we do everyday. For those who are not familiar with…
31st May 2015
Making the Strada Better
I’ve been using and engineering on the Strada EP for a while now, if you’ve read my previous posts on what it’s like as a machine to use day-to-day then…
28th April 2015
Advanced Strada Husbandry – Return to the Land of VST’s
We’ve been living with the Strada for 6 months now, so it seemed like a good time to revisit my previous post, The practical guide to Strada EP Husbandry. On…
27th April 2014
The Practical Guide to Strada EP Husbandry
The Practical Guide to Strada EP Husbandry – or how I learned to stop worrying and love the paddle. I’ve just taken delivery of a new La Marzocco Strada EP,…
27th April 2013