At the Coffee
Apothecary we live and breathe coffee! We love roasting it, brewing
it, drinking it, sharing it with others and geeking out about it.
We take this passion, and along with our skills, use it to craft the best possible
coffee we can through our sourcing, roasting and brewing.
As with any ingredient we use, we deeply care about where it came from, how it was grown, its quality, its environmental impact and, most importantly, how all the people involved have been treated.
We spend a long time
choosing each coffee we buy. Before any bean gets to us we have
already tasted it a number of times and have heard it's story from
the farm where it was grown. We work with a few different importers
to achieve this but one day hope to be buying enough coffee that we
can work directly and develop relationships with the farmers who take
such care to grow the beans.
From a distance, roasting may seem a little like a dark art but it is the perfect marriage of a sensual and data driven approach. Each coffee has its own roasting profile. This is essentially how the coffee gets from room temperature to somewhere just over 200°C. The end temperature, and how it gets there in terms of time and speed of roasting at all parts of the roast, make a big difference to how the coffee tastes.
After each carefully
managed roast, that lasts about 10 minutes, each coffee is analysed to
check if it has been roasted exactly how it was intended to be and is
tasted to make sure the sensory aspects are perfect. Then it is time
to pack it up so you can enjoy it at home or in our cafés.
You may have worked out by now that if we do something, we go all out with it, so our attention to detail does not stop at sourcing and roasting!
When we brew, everything is just as obsessed over. Every grind size is considered and picked, every coffee dose and amount of water is weighed and everything is timed. With about 100 man hours going into each cup of coffee, we owe it to ourselves and everyone who came before us in the coffee's chain to make it as best as we can! Have a look at our brew guides below for a few ways to make some delicious coffee at home.
Making coffee can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be. The most important thing in our minds is that you enjoy it and you love the delicious mug of coffee you make. Have a watch of the following brew guides to get a feel for how to make coffee in these three common brewers. We have tried to keep these pretty simple and accessible.
The internet is full of
geeky tips and tricks you can then use to take these up a notch if
you want to geek out a little further. Or you could check out our
coffee masterclasses!
That is because espresso is far too complicated and involved to try and explain in a short video. If you love espresso and want to learn how to make it better, check out our espresso masterclass and prepare to be amazed at how much there is to it and gain an even deeper love for it!