I’m back and thinking about football ….

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.

Tea Thing!

This ladies and gentlemen is “Tea Thing”! It is a sample that was given to Scott at Happy Donkey (www.happydonkey.co.uk) and passed to us to have a look at. There are no instruction and Scott was told that there are only three or so in the country at the moment. It has been played around with and thus far we cannot decide for sure whether it is meant to produce a cup/mug or a tea pot full at a time. We will shortly post the test results, but in the mean time, if anyone has any thoughts, please be forthcoming.

The Costa Rican arrives, more Intelligentsia delights & Hooooorah – er, I mean Harrar!

Good news, the rather lovely Costa Rican that Scott from Happy Donkey (www.happydonkey.co.uk) kindly allowed us to sample in February has now been added to his intentory. We have tried a bag or two of this medium roast coffee from the new stock and it remains every bit as lovely as the original sample. From our tasting log, “Lovely smooth sweet coffee with a good thick body. Nice honeycomb, frutiness with honey tones. Another very nice Costa Rican indeed”. And that says it all really, well worth trying. Good on Scott too, he is one of very few commercial bean suppliers that cares more about quality than bottom line. He selects his coffees very carefully and turns most around within a month – a week is not unusual for his top end blends. It would be nice to see other commercial suppliers emulating the gourmet market by keeping things high quality and as fresh as possible.

Talking of the gourmet market, roasting demi-god Steve over at Has Bean (www.hasbean.co.uk) has just put this year’s Ethiopian Harrar crop up on his site. I’ve heard from a couple of people that this year some of the beans are particulary good, though beware not all Harrars are equal, so make sure you buy from a source you know and trust. Steve describes this one as “Intense, with a complex taste of fruit, wine and chocolate”. We Harrar fans all know that if the crop is good and the preparation is right it can be the biggest blueberry bomb you can imagine. If you haven’t tried it, now is the time!

Kid ‘O’ & the Valentine’s Day Bolivian boys …….

A recent visit from a Canadian relative yielded a couple of bags of Intelligentsia’s finest (www.intelligentsiacoffee.com); the inimitable “Kid O’s Organic Espresso” and the somewhat long in title, but rather delightful, “Los Delirios Organic Nicaragua Direct Trade”. The beans were sourced from Manic Coffee in Toronto (www.maniccoffee.com), the owner of which, Matt Lee, is also the Canadian distributor of Intelligentsia. Both bags had been roasted a couple of weeks before arriving with us.

“Kid O” is one of the best known espresso blends in the world of speciality coffee. It is nothing short of a legend, and something that all gourmet aficionados strive to try at least once in their coffee lives, unless of course they live in North America, where their local quality independant cafe may well be serving it every day). As a typically dark roasted North American blend, it might not suit all European palates save for perhaps those of the old school Italian roast persuasion. It has a bit of a reputation for being a demanding blend to extract perfectly, but this is not something that should concern any self respecting hardcore enthusiast with reasonable equipment.

Some new coffee to try …….

It has been a couple of weeks, life has been rather hectic, and it’s nice to finally be blogging again.

Around Christmas, we were lucky enough to be given a couple of samples by Scott White at Happy Donkey (www.happydonkey.co.uk). He is considering both as potential new additions to his ever improving and rather impressive inventory of top quality commercial coffees.

The first was described by Scott, in his own inimitable way, as “quite odd in a nice way” and “good in a different way”. It was marked only as ‘Guatemalan Maragogype’ and Scott had no further information.