Coffee Gems
I had learnt of Coffee Gems from two different sources. Time to pay a visit.
Head roaster Ricardo. Background in coffee, had grown up on the family coffee farm in Colombia, had worked across Latin America as an agricultural adviser to farms helping to improve their coffee to enable them to secure a better price, direct trade not the FairTrade scam that maintains farmers in poverty. Now he was at the other end, roasting high quality coffee beans, nothing less than Q grade 94.
Whilst we were chatting he made me a cappuccino. Excellent.
I would have stayed and had a V60, but time was not on our side and he still had an order to process and deliver.
He gave me a bag of coffee he had literally just roasted, I could smell the roasting as I arrived, and invited me to return.
Highly tempting when I learnt he has Cup of Excellence from Colombia and Panama.
I made a number of suggestions:
- Follow the example of Pharmacie in Brighton, open on a Saturday as a pop up coffee shop.
- Hold coffee cupping.
- In the summer have a stall on the Guildford farmers market.
I also suggested a number of outlets for his coffee.
Note: I revisited the following week. I left with a bag of freshly roasted Colombian coffee. This I tried a few days later at Blackbird in Brighton. We agreed it was excellent.
