News

For many caffeine lovers, coffee drinking is less of a habit and more of a sacred ritual. This is certainly true for Spiller & Tait customers, who tell us they savour the daily ritual of making and drinking coffee as an antidote to the stresses and strains of their busy lives. This year, we want you to tell us about your coffee rituals so we can share them with others and celebrate our evolving UK home coffee culture. Scroll to the bottom and take action!

We recently conducted a survey with some of our regular customers to find out why they keep returning to our coffee.  The message back was loud and clear - the primary reason is flavour!   There were other reasons including: value for money; coffee freshness; good customer service and reliability.  But, by far the top reason was “consistently great flavour”.  And we were delighted to hear this, because, when we set-up Spiller & Tait, we wanted to focus on offering a small range of great tasting coffees which all offer a consistent flavour experience.  That is, coffees which are smooth and rich in flavour, but lacking in bitterness.  The specific flavours of each of our coffees vary significantly, but they all share these general traits, because we know from experience that it’s what most UK consumers are looking for in their fresh coffee.

The rise in availability of high quality single origin coffees in coffee shops and on-line retailers has prompted coffee fans to examine the relative virtues of single origin coffees verses blends.  In our opinion, one option is not better than the other.  It’s entirely down to what you are looking for in a coffee. 

There are several misconceptions when it comes to the coffee beans used to create an espresso.

The first misconception is that espresso is a particular type of bean grown in a particular country.  In fact, espresso can be made using virtually any type of coffee bean from any country – Sumatra, Kona, Kenya, or a blend of beans from different countries like our own Classic Italian Blend, which is composed of Arabica beans from Brazil and Ethiopia.  Coffee beans can be roasted in a variety of ways to create different tastes, so beans from any country can be roasted to suit the strong and intense espresso style. 

How coffee is roasted

Roasting the coffee beans is one of the biggest influences on the flavour of your coffee.  Roasting takes the green coffee seed, which has almost no flavour beyond a quite unpleasant vegetable taste, and transforms it into an incredibly aromatic and complex coffee bean.