Just a short note for those looking for Too Much Coffee. There is a slight issue with the TMC server this morning which is being addressed. Normal service will be resumed shortly, meanwhile please keep an eye here for any updates.

Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Update:  It is all sorted out now. The site is back up and running. Once again, apologies for the temporary outage.

For the past three days a remarkably large number of geeky coffee types have been staring at their computer screens whilst Lawrence Brown and his camera pals streamed live coverage of the UKBC finals to the internet for all to enjoy. And enjoy it we did!

Daft shenanigans prevailed on the accompanying web chat with some well known coffee names from around the globe dropping in and out as time zones, work commitments, alcohol consumption and just plain nodding off allowed. It was, in short, a good time with a great bunch of people who I am sure could not have had more fun if the same group had all spectated at the finals themselves …… and in all honesty, we could not have been so silly without being thoroughly told off!

The big news to come  from the web chat, and Steve Penk said it was no secret so I’m going to mention it here, is that the World Barista Championship is coming to London in 2010. Very exciting times.

There is much commentary and discussion about the UKBC competition itself on TMC (www.toomuchcoffee.co.uk). The standard was very good this year with solid presentations all round.

Thanks to Lawrence, individual performance videos can be viewed on demand at www.viddler.com/explore/ukbc/videos/

Huge congratulations to a very worthy and extremely popular champion, Gwilym Davies, who runs two coffee carts in London and is one of the nicest people in coffee. Gwilym, wearing his trademark flat cap and waistcoat (see photo on the right, shamelessly stolen from the official UKBC flikr stream) looked assured at all times, also taking the honours for best espresso and best signature drink.

Gwilym is the latest in a line of champions to be coached by the venerable Square Mile Coffee Roasters of London (www.squaremilecoffee.com), following the successes of two time UKBC and WBC 2007 winner James Hoffmann, former Irish Champion and current WBC holder Stephen Morrissey, and former World Cup Tasting Champion Anette Moldvaer.

TMC member Gwilym will go on to represent the UK later this year in the WBC being held in Atlanta, along with fellow TMC regular Colin Harmon, who was recently crowned Irish national champion.

Maxine Beardsmore of The Bottle Kiln in Derbyshire was UKBC runner-up and also won the coveted best cappuccino award. In third was another popular TMC member, and these days an independant entry in the competition, Tristan Stephenson.

Well done to everyone who took part and thank you to all concerned behind the scenes for three excellent days of coffee fun. Good luck to both Gwilym and Colin in Atlanta -  both are real contenders for the title.

In my usual slack style, February has managed to roll round before I finally completed the ‘Favourite 5′ list from 2008. Actually, it wasn’t easy and I kept changing my mind. That is a good thing though, if not for the timeline of the list, it certainly says much for the healthy state of the speciality coffee scene in the UK. Anyway, the list is now complete and appears in the ‘Favourite 5′ menu at the top of the page.

Also woefully late, thank you for the prod with a rather pointy stick Beany, is the result of the roaster naming competition. Thank you for the suggestions. They were all very good and it was not easy to decide on a winner. The entries from both Marcy and Technojock were excellent, however, in deference to Matt’s roasting prowess and fond memories of a chaff filled Whirley Pop session in our kitchen some years back now – that yielded both smoke and an excellent roast – plus and not least because his suggestion was a really good choice of name, the winner is:

Espressomattic, a.k.a. BreakoBoy, the king of the Whirley Pop with the name ‘Bernie’.

Congratulations mate and again thank you to everyone who took part. Matt wins the bag of homeroast that I said could not be sent overseas, though we will try to find a way if it’s at all possible.

Well that’s it for now. A massively belated wish to everyone for a very peaceful 2009.

At the risk of the title sounding like a Slade classic of yesteryear, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

It looks as though 2009 will be a tough year for many with the current economical crisis and the disappearance of much loved high street giants like Woolies and MFI. Let’s hope things improve as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, best wishes for a healthy, peaceful and prosperous new year.

It takes a lot to make me laugh aloud at a television programme, and a great deal to make that more than a little chuckle. The I. T. Crowd, now a few series old and demonstrating it’s maturity as a ‘fine wine’ of a comedy has brought me to tears more than once.

The depiction of a computer department ‘dungeon’ and those who inhabit it is perfect, and the subtle social references can easily be lost.  Hey, this is all sounding far too serious!

If you haven’t seen it, I would suggest you give it a go – and a couple of episodes for you to get into its groove. If you have ever worked in or with an I. T. department, you’ll probably ‘get it’ immediately.

Damn my sex pants ………..

Am I the only person that thinks HB Steve is a natural presenter?  Seriously, it’s no mean feat to remain informative whilst flowing in front of the camera. For those of you not yet acquainted with his brilliantly innovative new video blog initiative, have a little peep at www.inmymug.com – you won’t regret it,and you may even spot the odd discount code for some of Has Bean’s finest coffees!

Many months ago, I mentioned the Pinhalense that we were fortunate enough to acquire from a friend the previous summer. Not wanting to do things by half, or indeed fearful of not doing justice to the machine itself, we waitied patiently until a proper space could be made available as its permanent home.

Well the good news is that everything is now up and running thanks to some very kind help from a relative. It’s real seat of the pants roasting and extremely enjoyable. Interestingly, it seems easier to regulate the temperature of roasts with the Pinhalense situated beneath proper ventilation than it did whilst temporarily housed in the same space, though only a couple of roasts took place in that scenario and it could just be a case of becoming more familiar.

Also sorted out now is a proper cooling method for the beans which, although being ‘dumped’ at the correct time, were continuing to roast on despite the best efforts to stunt the roast. We are not fans of spritzing, so a rather ‘Heath Robinson’ contraption was built under the kind direction of TMC’s own roast database wizard ‘GreenBean’ who had already undertaken the process himself.

At a cost of some £65, thirty of which was for an engineering works to drill a single but perfect hole through stainless steel, the resultant finely tuned instrument looks a little like something one might see on a Wallace & Gromit film, but boy oh boy does it work!  The roast is stunted in under ten seconds, ambient temperature is reached in a mere twenty seconds and the beans are cold in around fifty seconds. Superb.

So our grateful  thanks to ‘GreenBean’ and all the gang at TMC, with a special mention for ‘Motoman’ who has also constructed a similar cooler and came up with some excellent ideas.

No doubt there will be more roasting tales over the coming months, but in the meantime the roaster needs a name. So here is the acid test for the blog, I may end up very depressed here if it becomes clear that no-one is reading, so a little competition is in order. A bag of the finest beans we can muster – roasted on said Pinhalense – shall be the prize to the person who comes up with the best name for our two-barrelled, gas-fired friend.

Beans will only be sent to UK addresses, though everyone is welcome to enter. We reserve the right to choose a name other than that which wins the competition, though I can’t see that happening. The closing date is 24th December 2008, the judges decision is final and the winning entry will be announced on New Year’s Day. Good luck!

The all too small speciality coffee world that many of us inhabit was rocked yesterday with the shock news that fellow enthusiast Danny McNulty had passed in the early hours of the morning.

It is always a surprise when someone dies suddenly, but even more so when they are apparently healthy, quite young – Danny was forty-nine – and a larger than life character. It seems that Danny had not been feeling too well and had been to hospital for tests. From accounts on alt.coffee, he went downhill quite quickly. That is all I know. It certainly made me think about how precious yet frail life is and how important it is to make the most of every sweet moment.

I came across Danny’s fabulously eclectic and informative website (www.danny.mcnulty.btinternet.co.uk/about.html) very early on in my coffee journey, long before finding TMC and other places that I now frequent. His espresso area was full of useful information about pulling shots, grinding correctly and all sorts about equipment. I have been pointing newcomers to coffee towards Danny’s pages ever since as his style of sharing information made so many hirtherto befuddling things very clear to me when I was at that stage of my development.

Danny’s Aladdin’s cave of a site also yielded the extemely entertaining story of his exploits in starting up a ‘commercial’ mobile coffee trailer near his Portsmouth home, which at first appeared to be as much for fun as anything, but subsequently became a very successful venture. That was Danny, up to all sorts and always having an adventure. He certainly seemed to live life to the full.

Like many online coffee folk, I never met Danny personally, but I did email him to say thank you for the information on his site and a very pleasent conversation ensued. He was clearly a very nice and very patient man, whom many felt as if they knew like a friend through his online persona. Danny was a member of TMC and an infrequent poster, though when he did pop-in, everyone seemed to know him.

For a while, Danny was the UK distributor of Monsooned Malabar. A few of my TMC compartiots bought from him now and then, all spoke highly.

In a small way, Danny was the ‘Alistair Cooke’ of the UK coffee world, regularly penning extremely funny pieces regaling readers of alt.coffee with his adventures in the coffee trailer, entitled “Sitting in a Field”. A search on alt.coffee will yield years worth of these classic little pieces that remind me very much of ‘Letter from America’. If you have not read them, they are well worth seeking out. Danny’s charm and wit shine through readily, as does his obvious consideration for his fellow beings. These are his lasting legacy to this, our little coffee world, which is today poorer for Danny’s loss.

God bless you Danny, rest peacefully. You will be missed by so many different people in lots of different ways. Thank you from those of us to whom you gave guidance either directly or through your website.

Our thoughts are with Danny’s loved ones.

News of a fantastic new coffee site that has sprung to life in recent weeks, www.coffee101.co.uk

Steve Leighton of Has Bean Coffee (www.hasbean.co.uk) has launched a completely free tutorial site that offers ten daily email ‘lessons’ intended to help newbies and experienced coffee people alike. As always, Steve gives much of himself and offers readers huge amounts of information drawn from his vast experience in the coffee industry.

The content offers an excellent overview of coffee history, information about where coffee comes from, how it is processed and types of roast amongst many other things. I just wish something like this had been about when I first got into coffee. It dispels many myths for people just starting out with the hobby and is invaluable for that reason alone. As someone with a little more experience, I found the course offered me focus by making so much knowledge available in one place and filling in a few gaps as well.

Well worth a look, totally free and containing some discount codes for Has Bean, I would advise everyone from the newest of the new to industry old hands to sign up and enjoy the fruits of Steve’s amazing know-how.

It has been a while since I last posted. Quite a long time in fact. It was not deliberate, but just happened for a number of reasons, none of which are particularly note worthy or relevant to what is ostensibly a coffee blog. Needless to say, I missed it and am pleased to be back.

Having just said coffee is the main subject around here, today’s topic is football. I guess, on that note, most of the coffee people, bar one notable roaster, have just surfed away to something more relevant to them and anyone left is either a football fan or simply can’t be bothered at the moment to look for something else to read.

It’s that time again, the start of a new football season with all of the usual excitement. Everyone has hopes and dreams. I remember the summer of 1976, an August Saturday morning, not unlike today, but with less rain. It was my first real season of following football properly. Football Focus had a preview of

the season and as Grandstand began Frank Bough stood in front of the old green BBC football results and tables charts. They were still manually operated in those days, clever graphics were years away. I remember as the show opened, Frank said that it was the first day of an exciting new season and at a quarter to five, the boards would spring frantically to life with details the day’s events. Earlier that morning, I had bought a new football magazine called ‘Roy of the Rovers’. It was fantastic and for the next few years, without fail, I would run down the hill to the newsagents every Saturday morning to claim my copy from the ‘collections’ pile. It could have been delivered with the morning papers, but that would have simply spoilt my excited fun. I wanted to feel that first Saturday morning every week.

The excitement is still the same for most football fans as it ever was, but things are different these days. For starters, the Premier League and Football League often seem to kick-off on different Saturdays. Oddly though, today’s Football League season opening seems more like the old days to me than next

Jumpers for goalposts?

week probably will when the ‘big boys’ including my team begin their season. For me, the Football League Championship, not the Premier League, more closely resembles the old First Division. I think it is because the lower tier teams still have a large number of British players. I love the Premier League, it is surely the greatest league on earth these days and the quality is breath-taking. It’s just that each year the start of the Football League evokes strong memories of my youth. So, when Championship tactics appear a little naïve by comparison, I just remind myself they play a brand of football that many of us were brought up on, and then I rejoice at the whole stunning other level of skill that those in the Premier League are capable of producing. I love it all.

Football has changed immeasurable off the field as well. There wasn’t a lot of money about in 1976. Compared to the rest of us, footballers were well paid, but they were not getting ‘pop-star money’ and the average fan could relate to them. My point though is not about the pay packets of footballers but the amount of cash in the boardrooms. Back then, clubs were not really expected to make money by their shareholders, avoiding a loss was a good year. They were typically run by custodians who came from successful business careers. Local men made good with a desire to help their football club do well. Football was about sport, winning matches, not making money. Clubs were not an investment opportunity for money men, they were about community togetherness and entertainment. In those days, the club was an amalgam of the people in the boardroom who ran it with the sole aim of success on the field, the manager and players who went out and played each week with the sole aim of success on the field, and the fans who stood on the terraces each week to support the team with the sole aim of success on the field. It was simple; that was the football club. In the old days, the fans were the heart and the boardroom knew that. There were often hundreds or thousands of small shareholders, ensuring that the ‘ownership’ was never going to play a significant part in vetoing ‘football decisions’.

I find it difficult these days to work out what many clubs actually consist of now with leveraged buy-outs by investors looking for a quick profit and billionaires seeking a play thing. Where is the heart of the club? Where is someone at the top who actually cares about winning for winning’s sake rather than potential profit alone?

I think all that is truly left of those innocent days are the fans. They adore their clubs for the sheer love of it, without ulterior motive or thought of personal gain. It is a pure love. The spirit of clubs seems these days only to reside within the fans themselves and perhaps a few committed local born players, or those lucky enough to find themselves playing for their boyhood favourite teams. A disparate group is likely to erode the identity of any entity and foreign born players cannot be expected to truly understand the history of clubs from another land. Huge sums of money and a lack of historical understanding can easily change the motive for players wanting to succeed within a club and what they perceive ultimately amounts to success. Is it winning trophies or attaining the next big contract? In some cases, it makes me wonder. Today, there is an ever blurred line between the loyal player with a genuine love of the club and the mercenary with a taste for glory, be that personal or collective.

I recently caught a couple of episodes of a low budget reality show called “The Amazing Adventures of a Nobody: USA”. It’s a well put together half hour program about someone trying to travel across the States on five Dollars a day. The presenter and producer, Leon Logothetis, is a hugely entertaining and very likable man, who despite finding himself in a terrible predicament with nowhere to stay during the making of one particular episode, insisted that he got his priorities right and found a bar showing the live Liverpool v Chelsea game. His company is called ‘Shankly Productions’. I think that says it all.

YNWA 96