Reiss
Yes, blog away.
Stephen
On 22/12/2010 10:11, lespresso wrote:
> Thank you for taking the time to write
> May I publish this email on our blog (without your email address?)
> Merry Christmas
> Reiss
>
> P. +44 20 7193 3901
> M. +44 7801 224 520
> LondiniumEspresso.com
>
> On 22 Dec 2010, at 09:56, Stephen and Heather Park<stephen@ > wrote:
>
>> Hi Reiss
>>
>> Just to let you know our coffee arrived this morning. Thank you very much.
>>
>> I thought I would also let you know that we are still very pleased with our Bacchi espresso machine. It has been used about 100 times now. When you realise how much you use it, the price seems such good value.
>>
>> Happy Christmas
>>
>> Stephen Park
Delicate hazelnut tones as it ages & and begins to round out on roast date plus 4 days. Still too young, or perhaps we will need to roast slightly darker
Yes, it's our contribution towards trying to make your Christmas a little more enjoyable; get the presents there on time!
We will send all orders out tomorrow on a next day service (UK orders only obviously)
This is not the same as saying they will actually arrive the next day given current meteorological conditions, but we are making an effort to shorten the odds for you
We don't ask for a telephone number for fun & we will never release this data to any third party or contact you unless we are unable to fulfill our contractual obligations with you, i.e. we can not deliver the goods for some reason
Any of the heavier products like cups, espresso making equipment, or larger orders of coffee are sent by courier
We have a number of orders at the moment that we are unable to get away as a result of not having a contact telephone number
Our couriers will not allow us to book your consignment without a contact telephone number
In some case email addresses that appear to be bogus or at best infrequently checked have been provided so we have no option but to wait for you to call us I'm afraid
If you fall into this category we look forward to hearing from you soon so we can get your order heading in your direction
Test roast 1 reveals a fairly delicate coffee, certainly free from the tea like tannins that we find unpleasant in so many african coffees (others will describe this as gamey and spicy). At this early stage we are getting pleasant notes of brown sugar, overlaid with some kind of herb like rosemary. It will be interesting to see if this remains as the coffee ages in the next few days.
While Londinium espresso are bespoke coffee roasters our coffee for sale on the internet is very much the result of a rather undemocratic process. We've decided that tastes are so diverse that rather than stock a vast array of coffees to cater to all tastes we will simply continue to try new coffees. The ones that we like we will restock and retain, those we are less keen on will disappear.
In this way we can at least stand behind every coffee we sell. If you really like and enjoy a product it is easy to support it post-sale, and to understand any elements in it that may annoy or disappoint. It also allows us to alter the roast quite easily if we have a request to roast it a little lighter or darker.
We also find there is a need to monitor our coffee stock regularly, in much the same way as you would a garden, as the coffee progressively changes as it ages, generally needing less roasting the older it becomes. In order to monitor effectively it precludes us from holding a ridiculous vast selection of coffee, so we will do our best to balance the competing needs of everyone, as we do appreciate that a wide selection of coffee is appealing to many of you.
You may have noticed by now that we did a u-turn on the roast that we decided was optimum for this coffee when it came down to it.
This is a classic example of how a roast changes as it ages. Test roast 5 seemed to raw and harsh the first time we tried it, but some 13 days later it trumped the rest; with slight sooty notes rising in the darker roasts as they aged.
Test roast 5 is the profile we are running with. Just be sure to allow 10 days at a minimum before you open it.
A few weeks ago we purchased a copy of this and didnt have all the programs closed that we should have before downloading the updates and we locked it all up and it ended rather badly with a complete reinstall from time machine being required. the only thing we learnt is just how incredibly easy it is to restore from backup using time machine; a piece of cake. we thought the microsoft code was as buggy as the jungle at the time, but in retrospect I think we were probably just a bit unlucky (& careless!). the conclusion is we were moving up from Office for Mac 2008 and it is significantly better, in particular it opens files much more quickly on my fairly standard 3 year old plus black polycarb mac book. If you wondering whether it is worth the coin i think it is. the user interface is also significantly improved with it being much easier to find the function you are looking for, which is important on a 13" screen.
A customer in Finland tells us we're a bit boring; he's probably right so we're taking action. It'll take more than the introduction of some new and interesting coffee beans to resolve that I hear you mutter! Anyway, we've got some Ethiopian coffee from the Zege monastery estate which we've not tried before, arriving at 6am before the snow sinks its teeth in again. We hope it will be more like the Sidamo we have (which we like rather a lot), rather than the Yirgacheffe we have as we're really not keen on Yirg in espresso despite the good and the great of gourmet coffee suggesting otherwise. It's not a right or wrong thing, it's simply a matter of taste and we dont like it much in espresso. As a filter coffee we value its complexity and interest but its like an overly flamboyant personality in the room, we tire of it rather quickly.
Anyway, we digress. We've replenished our strategic reserves of the Brazilian yellow bourbon from the Rainha estate which is a wonderful coffee that we thought we might run out of before more arrived, but good fortune meant fresh supplies have arrived in time. We also have coffee that we would like to spend more time on to refine the roast further, the Dominican Republic coffee being a good example.
Then new for us in 2011 will be a raft of coffees that we envisage deploying as dedicated espresso roasts, but lets see if they live up to their billing first. The gap between expectation and reality as a result of slight exaggeration by coffee brokers is rife, so we find ourselves 'sucking and seeing' before we proclaim any of the coffee we buy as fit for sale. The coffee world certainly isnt short on superlatives, indeed it gives real estate agents a good run for their money.
So what does early 2011 hold in the way of new coffee at Londinium? Well, a couple of single estate coffees from Brazil, an espresso blend from Brazil (we have doubts but lets see), 3 coffees from Guatemala (you really hope some of the proceeds flow back as a force for good with the dire situation that is currently being reported there). Then of more interest we have taken a generic arabica from India which will be interesting to expand our palate and understanding as we have only sold 2 coffees from India previously, one of which continues, the Monsooned Malabar. We've taken some fairly standard Sumatran too. The highlight for us will be getting stuck into two new coffees from Costa Rica as we have a reasonable amount of experience in Costa Rican coffees generally, so the bar is set fairly high for the first jump.
Anyway, with the Christmas season upon us and a pile of issues to clear before donning the Santa suit again it might be January before we get one of these new coffees developed to the stage where it is ready for release.
Have an enjoyable Christmas & thank you for your custom in 2010.
We will be roasting and posting through the Christmas period, excluding the statutory and bank holidays. If you've coffee questions we'll be contactable as usual in the multitude of ways that our modern world permits.
You will have noticed that we have updated a number of our prices
1. Olympia machines: since we started selling Olympia machines in 2008 we have consistently sold them at around cost price in order to establish a name for ourselves. This was not sustainable, and we upset the other Olympia resellers around the globe quite a lot in the process which is understandable. Our pricing for these machines is now the Olympia recommended retail price in Swiss francs translated into sterling. We are also charging for delivery now, although we will probably use DHL Express direct from the factory in Switzerland to ensure you have full tracking of your machine and for UK customers to remove Parcelforce from the import chain as they don't add to the efficiency of the process I think its fair to say.
2. Coffee: as you know Londinium are different in that we actually roast your coffee to order in almost all cases, as evidenced by the roast date stamped on the top of each bag. Reviewing our order patterns we observed that we had a lot of customers ordering a single bag or a single bag of a large number of different roasts. This is incredibly time consuming as you can imagine. The price changes have not been made in response to increasing coffee prices; we are using price as a mechanism to guide your choices in ordering, in particular to encourage you to order greater amounts of the same coffee. In essence we need to drive more efficiency into our business. In particular I don't really think 250g of coffee is enough to really 'get into the taste' by the time you have dialled your grinder in. I think this is especially an issue for espresso coffee where being only slightly off in the grind is magnified greatly in the cup. Yet we will stick with 250g bag sizes as this ensures that the coffee is at its optimum. So if you are prepared to order 2 bags of any given coffee, and our belief is anyone who is serious about the coffee will need 500g to get into it, then the cost per bag drops quickly from a high GBP7.50 to a more reasonable GBP6.00 per bag. The next change we have made is to encourage an even number of bags to be ordered as observation has shown that this further increases efficiency in our process. For this reason the basis has shifted from a single 5 bag option to 4 and 6 bag options, each rewarding the customer with progressively greater levels of discount, costing GBP5.00 and GBP4.00 per bag respectively.
It is important to understand the basis of the premium that Londinium charges. You will see some of our coffees offered elsewhere for considerably less. We would implore you to try the competitor's offering alongside ours as we have no doubt they will tell you that 'its the same coffee guv, they're just ripping you off'. We have every confidence that your tongue will be faithful in reassuring you that this is simply untrue from the very first sip. We are charging you on the basis of time for our roasting skills, in the same way that a lawyer, accountant, or other service based professional does. This means we try to charge all our coffees at the same price (it takes the same amount of time for us to roast an inexpensive coffee as a more expensive coffee), other than those coffees that are an order of magnitude more expensive, such as the Jamaican Blue Mountain and Kopi Luwak. It is this unique transformation of the raw green coffee in our own unique roast signature that we are charging you for.
The raw product is available from multiple sources. You should be seeking out a roaster that can bring the best out of your favourite coffee. Do not accept that any shortcomings in the coffee is the coffee's fault; it is for the roaster to tame these as best he can or to elect that the coffee is not fit for sale as we frequently do at considerable cost, the most recent being the Jamaican Blue Mountain from the Blue Baron Estate (2009/10 crop) as we were uncomfortable selling it at around the GBP25.00/bag mark.
Roasters often pitch the story in such a way as to have you believe that it is difficult to find suitable coffee to roast. While it is true that we roasters frequently receive coffee from coffee brokers and direct from source that disappoints, or deviates significantly from the previous shipment when it is supposed to be the same coffee, we will commit heresy and tell you that for the majority of the time any disappointment you experience in the cup is due to the shortcomings of your favourite roaster.
Do not under estimate the challenge presented to get the same result from a consignment of coffee bag after bag. A moment's inattention results in a disappointed customer. For this reason we implore you to get in touch with us and give us both barrels if you ever receive a bag of coffee from Londinium that fails to meet your expectations. The reasons for this can be many and varied, but we stand behind our product and will replace, exchange, or refund as required to ensure you go away satisfied and understand that your custom is important to us.
Londinium is a genuine small roaster of gourmet coffee in London, England. We are not a monstrous coffee roaster of over a million tonnes of 'hand roasted' coffee a year, making out with clever marketing techniques that we are small.
