Naked Espresso

There are many ways to make a good pour of espresso coffee, but many more ways to ruin one. Automatic machines, stale coffee, factory farmed cow milk, ugly business models, addiction, and an industry trained fetish for sucking on plastic lids all contribute to ruining what should be a glorious and sensual pleasure.

Nine reasons why our coffee is better than what you may have become accustomed to:

1. Everything we serve in your cup is Certified Organically Grown, from the espresso that we pour to the chocolate grated on the top. This is simply a question of quality, decency and sustainability before outright profit. Anything less is less than ideal.

2. We use exclusively Fair Trade certified beans in all our coffee blends. The Fair Trade system is not perfect, but is by far the best system we have seen for helping coffee producers get a fair go. Please, BEWARE of cynical, industry pseudo-certifications that are big on gloss and low on real benefit. "Greenwash" is ugly. Google "Greenwash Coffee" to investigate for yourself.

3. We roast locally. This means that we can carefully select green beans, roast accordingly and then grind and serve the beans at their peak.

4. We grind strictly on demand. Coffee starts losing aroma the moment its is ground. It is important to use it immediately, so we do not allow ground coffee to sit in the doser going stale.

5. We use naked (sometimes called "bottomless") portafilters - so we don't split the pour between two cups to give you a faster, cheaper, weaker shot. Every shot we pour is a double, and the naked portafilter gives us (and you) real-time visual feedback of the quality of our work.

6. We invite you to sit down, and serve your coffee in Italian Ceramic,  Swiss Porcelain or French Glass. Our business model is not based on throwing you out as quickly as possible with a cup of warm cardboard yelling "next!"

7. We discourage take-away. Cardboard and plastic is no way to treat decent coffee -  or yourself, we would much rather welcome you, serve you, and let you take a break. However, if you must, we will prepare your coffee in our special biodegradeable and compostable "Bio Cup" take-way cups.

8. We serve no factory farmed cow milk. It is disgusting, and we won't participate. No chemical and artificial sweeteners. We guess these lines in the sand will rule us instantly out of contention for any coffee awards sponsored by companies pushing these products - and we wouldn't enter them anyway.

9. We only use organic, whole-bean Bonsoy from Japan, and organic rapadura sugar from Columbia. We have blended our organic coffee to marry with these. Organic bean (coffee) + Organic Bean (soy) + Organic Sugar (unrefined) = WOW!

To Summarise

Our coffee is simply superb, and we are always looking for ways to make it even better. There is much more to a "decent cup of coffee" than simply how it tastes; how it got to you is important too.