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Gold Box Roastery - Indonesia - Dog and Hat Box

Phew its been a little while since we finished off the last Dog and Hat box, like I always say, better late than never! 


My favourite thing about the Dog and Hat box will always be discovering new roasters that I typically wouldn't discover on my own (top perk of having a subscription coffee box!)


Who are Gold Box Roastery?

The simple philosophy at the centre of our business is less swagger, more substance; Our coffee speaks for itself.

It's the creativity, warmth and mastery of the farmers we meet along the way that inspires our approach to speciality coffee. They're the real heroes of our trade. From Ecuador to Bolivia: Kenya to Ethiopia, each new origin we visit teaches us something new. Reinvigorating our passion to create coffees as unforgettable as the locations they originate from.

It's not simply the country of origin that factors unto the flavour of your coffee. Everything from the altitude it's grown at, to the soil and the techniques used to farm it can distinctly change the flavour. We only select ripe beans from altitudes where they grow at their finest to bring you incredible coffees with chocolate to fruity notes, and everything in between. 

Roasting coffee is an art form. That's why we use watercolour paintings to represent the complex flavour profiles of each new specialty roast. 

Roaster - Probat P25



The Coffee

Indonesia Team Pegasing

From the Pegasing washing station in the North Sumatra region of Indonesia. 

This washing station and farm belonging to Hendra and his family is an island of specialty experimental processed coffee in a sea of conventional wet hulled coffee the area is typically known for.

Hendra and the family have invested heavily in the farm and post harvesting facilities where they have built a small wet will with two pulpers, gravitational washing channels and several raised beds in large poly tunnels for drying coffee.

Hendra has continued to experiment and now has around 8-10 different processes that he produces. The small washing station will produce up to 40 tons of green coffee every year. The coffee is purchased from 70 farmers around the area who want to work with Hendra and pick ripe cherries as he has incentivised them to do this by rewarding good picking. If any farmers have travelled further to get to Hendra's farm then they are paid extra for this as well.


Process - Anaerobic Natural

Altitude - 1300-1500MASL

Varietal - Typica

Taste Notes - Tropical Fruit and Spice 




Let's Brew! 

Brewer: V60 

Recipe: 15g / 225g 

Total Brew Time: 2 Minutes 3 Seconds

Ratio: 1:15




Taste: This coffee was unlike any other Indonesian coffee I've had (in the best way!). The initial taste was a wave of dark brown sugar tartness. When the cup had cooled slightly, I got notes of fruit that is super rare to find in coffee (my favourite kind of coffees!) super sweet honeydew melon, with sweet pineapple notes to accompany. It was super tropical in flavour which is an absolute delight (and haven't had a coffee like this since Bailies released Stephens World Brewer Cup roast!) it was a pure delight to have an absolutely delicious coffee and it's safe to say that this bag of coffee went down very quickly!!



Find Gold Box Roastery

Website - here

Instagram - here



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London Coffee Festival 2019

After an amazing time in Amsterdam, for Amsterdam Coffee Festival, I was both super excited and super sceptical for London Coffee Festival.

London Coffee Festival, was essentially everything I thought it was going to be, it had it's highs, it had it's lows, and I definitely had a good time, but there were definitely things that could've been done and set up better (and some people were real shitty, but we'll get onto that later)


If you read last years London Coffee Festival post (read here) you'll know I went on the Friday and Saturday. Not this year, I learnt from last year and went for just the industry days, the Thursday and Friday.



Straight off the bat, first complaint - WHY WAS THE PROJECTOR SO SHAKY THIS YEAR? Do you know how hard it was to get a photo?! 
None the less, here's the "did you even go to the coffee festival if you didn't get a photo of the projected logo?"


I got to Shoreditch really early this year (I was up at 4.30am, many regrets) and actually took to time to explore ("explore" as in I aimlessly walked around the place trying to get my barings and refusing to use Google Maps) 
I came across the gorgeous billboard from Jimmy's Coffee



I mean hats off, it's genius.


After already hitting 10,000 steps despite it only being 8.30 in the morning, I headed back to the Oatly stand, for my first coffee of the day (you're not doing LCF right if you don't get a coffee from the oatly pop up stand first) 



Oatly partnered up with Origin for London Coffee Festival (yum)
OatlyxOrigin




Classic Oatly advertising, everywhere. 
Almost fainted when I found out how much Oatly spends on advertising. 


Now actually getting into the festival

It's always clear that every year more and more people are going to hear about the festival and it's going to get busier and busier, but hot damn, wow. The queues were insane this year, and that was only on the Thursday. I dread to think how it was on Saturday and Sunday.



It's always so surreal seeing my blog name, even if it's just on a ticket (lol)


I'm not usually into Coffee Masters, but this year, Benji and Dhan were competing (although I didn't actually get to see Dhan actually competing, oops sorry Dhan)




So naturally the first place I headed was to Coffee Masters, not only to get my bearings on who was where this year, but just in time to watch Benji compete. 
Maybe next year I'll be really into the Coffee Masters and follow it through to the end, but then again that seems rather ambitious.


After going around a few stands, saying hello to everyone and giving out lots of hugs (esp to the girls who grind coffee, holla) 
I headed up to the Women In Coffee talk.



This was a SUPER interesting, and amazing talk.
The panel was made up of 
- Bianca Tuckwell, the global marketing manager for Ozone Coffee Roasters.
- Jacqueline Turner, the director of Kinini Coffee
- Agnieszka Rojewska, the WBC and Coffee Masters champion 2018 (and my ultimate girl crush right now)
- Anne Lunell, the founder of Koppi Coffee
- Freda Yuan, the head of coffee at Origin Coffee Roasters

It was incredible to see how different each of the women's journeys were and still are through the coffee industry, from farming, roasting, all the way to the cup. 



After that, I went to see who I could find, and ended up bumping into Ana (and Dhan) Ana seems to always slip her way into my London Coffee Festival posts



I also popped by Girls Who Grind Coffee, to get some sick tatts 



For real though if anyone actually wants to tattoo these onto me, thanks.


After this I had a bit of a shitty moment - after an Instagram DM sent me into a bit of a bad mood (of course I tweeted it, lol)
In short, a company got in touch about a blog collaboration over Instagram, saying how they'd seen I was at LCF and how they'd love to meet up for a chat, I of course was like "oh hell yeah"
Here's where it got a bit patchy - They asked me to meet them in the VIP Lounge, all well and good apart from I didn't have a VIP ticket, because you know, what's the point, I was going to LCF to look around not sit around in the VIP Lounge. 
They then proceeded to tell me that I shouldn't be a blogger if I wasn't going to bother getting a VIP ticket. 
a) how does a VIP ticket mean I'm worthy of being a blogger?
b) why does a company (that I was excited to work with) feel the need to belittle ANYONE
c) WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK. 

Honestly the situation, absolutely baffled me.
Just because you have a VIP ticket, does not mean you're better than everyone else that has a standard ticket. 



Back to positives - here are some more photos from day 1 












I also met the lovely Polly-Anna from One Click Coffee Box's
She's super lovely, and you should all check out One Click (I'll be doing monthly blog posts of the boxes, so you cant hide from them!!!)










Onto Day 2 



Day 2 started on a really positive note, I checked out of my hostel at about 8am and headed out in the sun, got a pack of raspberries from Tesco (living my best life honestly) and headed to sit in the sun at the Oatly stand. 



 Considering it was only 8am, it was already a gorgeous day, that I could sit comfortably in short sleeves (amazing)



This is also where I had my first councilling call, which took me up to the time of going into the festival. If you read my last blog post as well, you'll know that I'll be doing some blog posts regarding mental health soon, so look out for those.



I obviously had to scout out the custom machine parts that SkateReclaimCreate did for the Conti machine, look how freaking beautiful.



I also went to spend some time at the La Marzocco stand (and had a proper play with the KB90, wow I'm in love please)




Another panel talk I went to was the Coffee in crisis, a discussion on the future of ethical and sustainable coffee.
The panel was made up of
- Hosted by Greg Meenahan from World Coffee Research
- David Brooks, the managing director of Percol Coffee 
- Sian Sutherland, the Co-Founder of A Plastic Planet
- LJ Loftus, the head of supply chain at Fairtrade Foundation
- Mario Cerutti, the Cheif Institutional Relations and Sustainability Officer at Lavazza
- David Mills, the CEO of Weather Safe
- Polly Astbury, the Coffee Buyer at Waitrose 

Again this was such an amazing and eye opening chat. 
If you missed this chat, you really missed out (if anyone took a livestream or video during this chat, I'd love to see it!!) 


After the chat was over, I walked around for a bit longer, but started to get really anxious, I found a safe corner for a while, but it didn't get any better. 
In short I ended up having one of the worst panic attacks I've had in a really long time. 
I swiftly planned my exit, swinging by and saying goodbye to the people I could, but I got out of there like a flash. 





I ended my time at London Coffee Festival with a trip to Knot Pretzel at Clapham (although they've stopped doing my fave paprika ones!! devastated to say the least) 



London Coffee Festival was amazing, but it definitely had it's downfalls, and I don't think it was nessasarily anything that could've been helped. 
Considering a massive thing this year was "bring your own reusable cup" it was surprising the amount of stands that would just chuck paper cups with samples in at you before you even got the chance to get out your reusable ones. Can we sort that out for next year please?

My only other issue was the amount of women putting other women down (I don't know if it was just me that experienced this) I was literally so interested in a stand with a product I had never seen before, I got talking to the woman on the stand, started asking questions, it was all going well, she asked what I did, I said I was a barista and a coffee blogger, this woman literally scoffed at the word blogger, and walked off?!?!? um what?! Luckily the guy on the stand saw what happened and answered the questions I had previously asked. 
If it wasn't for that experience of the woman, I probably would've actually spent my money on this product. 

It's 2019, are we still putting people down for being bloggers?!?! Or because people think that bloggers are just after free products?!  WE NEED TO STOP THAT.




If you were at London Coffee Festival, what were your experiences? Did you have a good time? 








The Coffee Life

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One Click Coffee Box

**This box was very kindly gifted to me**


What's this? A different subscription box from Untold? I only feel like I'm slightly cheating on them. But when Pollyanna contacted me asking if I wanted to try out the box, I could hardly say no.



One Click is something that has pretty much popped up all over Instagram and Facebook over the past couple of weeks, and for a good reason - One click are a subscription coffee company, that are dedicated to finding high quality, high standard coffee every month.

The packaging of this box is fantastic, on the top when you open the box the first thing you see is the One Click newspaper (more about that later on!) next is the branded tissue paper that everything is so (NEATLY, I mean honestly how is it so neat?!?!) wrapped in.


Inside the beautifully wrapped paper, was the two coffees, a really cute tin to store your beans/ground coffee and a real sweet little coaster (I believe every one in other boxes were different) mine said "Good Morning"




One Click Coffee have quite a few different boxes, which is ideal for anyone.

The boxes they offer:
The monthly subscription box at £25 a month
Includes:
- 2x 250g bags of beans (either whole bean or ground)
- A monthly newspaper
- Something to eat or keep

The Office Box (a genius idea!!!) at £55 a month
Includes:
- 4 x 250g bags of beans from 2 different roasters (either whole bean or ground)

The Housemate Box at £40 a month
Includes:
- 3 x 250g bags of beans (either whole bean or ground) - ideal for 4 housemates

The 3 Month subscription at £72.99
- Saving you £2.01 instead of paying monthly

The 6 Month Subscription at £144.99
- Saving you £5.01 instead of paying monthly

The 12 Month Subscription at £285.99
- Saving you £14.01 instead of paying monthly

I love that there are so many boxes and so many ways to pay, in an ideal world if I had a straight near £300 spare I'd sign up for a year, but we'll stick to monthly payments for now hey.




The newspaper is an amazing little addition to the box, with some key brewing information and interviews with both 200 Degrees and Nord Coffee. It's great because not only do you get to drink the delicious coffee, but you also get to learn a lot about the companies, the ethics behind it, and meeting the people who roast the coffee, a win-win







In this particular box, the 2 different roasters were -  200 Degrees Roastery and Nord Coffee

I was really excited when I received this box because I hadn't tried either of the roasters but they were both on my "to try" list - so first up

200 Degrees Roastery
Panama La Boquete
Medium Roast
Farm: Garridos Estates
Process: Hand Picked & Washed - Sun and Mechanical Drying
Growing Altitude: 1500-1750m
Taste Notes: Raspberry, Peanut, Aromatic

Brewed by cafetière - 14g in, 275ml water, 95degrees, total brew time of 3 minutes & 25 seconds
- super fruity and floral, smooth with next to no acidity



Brewed by aeropress - 16g in, 260g of water, 30 second bloom time, total brew time of 2.15 
- boy was this coffee delicious, I have been obsessed with this coffee since trying it through the aeropress, it's super aromatic and fruity, the ideal combination. 




Nord Coffee
Rulindo
Rulindo District, Rwanda
Varietal: Red Bourbon
Process: Washed
Taste Notes: Red Apple, Honey, Orange
Cup Score: 87

Brewed by cafetière - 14g in, 275ml water, 95degrees, total brew time of 3 minutes & 25 seconds
- this brew was super sweet and syrup-y and very true to the taste notes of Apple and honey which both came through beautifully.




Brewed by aeropress - 16g in, 260ml water, 30 second bloom, total brew time of 2.20 seconds
-super sweet and fresh, a crisp finish, with fruity acidity when it cools.





I'm so glad neither of these coffees disappointed my expectations - and I will be definitely purchasing from them both in the future - and as for the box itself, I have subscribed to a monthly box, which means I'll have 2 subscription box posts every month! Hopefully meaning my consistency of blogging will improve because I'll be forced to have more of a schedule.




Find One Click Coffee Here

Website - here
Instagram - here 
Facebook - here
YouTube - here
Pinterest - here




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The Roasting Party - Costa Rica Jaguar Honey

It's been a long while since I've blogged about The Roasting Party (over a year) and I'd like to think looking back that review, -wasn't- my greatest, it was the first ever coffee review I did, my format for the post was all over the place and I'd like to think that I have slightly improved over the last year and a bit. So we're back with another good'un from TRP



Way back in the day when I worked for Coffee Lab, they were supplied by The Roasting Party, and I fell in LOVE, like actual real, true love with one of their single origins, that single origin being Costa Rica Jaguar Honey. I wasn't even the only one in the shop that felt this way, it was delicious.
So when I subtly mentioned to my boyfriend in December that I saw it was stocked on their website, (it was not subtle at all) he ever so kindly "surprised" me with it on Christmas Day.







Costa Rica Jaguar Honey
Full Body, Moderate Acidity, Brown Sugar, Chocolatey 

Tasting Notes - Orange, Yellow Peach, Milk Chocolate, Almond






Recently I've been tracking my recipes on a coffee app called "Coppee" - I will be doing a blog post about some great coffee apps soon.


For this particular recipe through V60, I used 23g of a medium course grind, 320g of water at 85 degrees, and brewed it for 3 minutes and 5 seconds. 





(we're going to skip past the fact I'm using 01 filters in an 02 V60)


Whilst brewing, it had a super prominent crema, and really light fruity aromas. 

Exact Recipe -
Bloom 30 seconds, with continuous stirring
10 second pouring, making water up to 150ml (g)
Wait until 1 minute, 15 second, and pour water until 275ml (g)
At 2 minutes, 15 seconds, pour the remaining water to 320ml (g)
Remove V60 at 3 minutes and 5 seconds
Leave to cool for 3 minutes


My Taste Notes -

Super syrup-y and sugar like, with a super light mouthfeel
Light fruity notes, smooth with little acidity.
Moderate acidity tones as cooled, with a lingering chocolate after taste.
Super delicious fruity and chocolatey notes.


I've definitely re-found my love for Jaguar Honey, and if you ever get the chance to get any coffee from The Roasting Party, lean towards this one, you definitely wont regret it.



Find The Roasting Party

Website
Instagram

Other Coffee Life Posts On The Roasting Party

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe - Kochere Gutiti 




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