Some of you may have seen in the press about the changes to the postage rates and Royal Mail. Alas it works against the humble small company as always, meaning higher postage rates. For the immediate short term we are not changing our prices and swallowing the rates until we see the full impact, but ultimately we may have to. We may look into using other methods of shipping too.

If you have a specific method of shipping you prefer (i.e. Royal mail or ANC parcels) please let us know in the comments box before placing an order. We can not Guarantee we will use this method, but if possible we will try.

Ok I have no Shame, I’ve copied our friend James Hoffmann and swapped our blog across to a package called WordPress. Like James I wanted something a little more flexible and better for our blog and here it is. You can now add comments and the RSS feed is much better than the old. We hope you like our new home, and sorry James, but it’s the best form of flattery. Our New Blog is at www.hasblog.co.uk

We are having a hottop sale. We have taken delivery of a small number of Hottops at a special price and we wanted to pass this onto you guys. It’s a limited number and once they’re gone we need to talk to Chang Yue and see what we can do, but this is a tester to see how it goes.

So Buy now to avoid disappointment this offer is temporary and they will be going back up unless you buy them all up and Chang Yue make it permanent.

BUY BUY BUY NOW !!!

Our man on the ground in Honduras has sent us a picture of our sack waiting to be filled with our cup of excellence award winning coffee. To you it’s a sack to me it’s freaking cool 🙂

Well I’m excited anyway

People, may I have your attention. YOUR COFFEE ROASTER NEEDS YOU! I’ll explain some more.

Some kind soul has put us forward for local hero of the year from UKTV’s UK Food channel. Now were not much for awards, yes there nice but this one really wet my appetite. It’s an award for people doing good things with food. For me the most interesting part is to try and get coffee thought about as a culinary item, and inform people it doesn’t have to taste nasty and bitter or drowned in milk but can taste and be a perfect accompaniment for great food.

So if you’ve been impressed with what we do there are two steps for you to follow. I’m happy if you just do number 1 but number two would be great as well. We will be so grateful if you take the time to do it.

Step 1

Go to the link here and click the vote now button. You will have to register, but this is a seriously big company and I can’t imagine they will be spammers. Vote and let us tell the world of how good speciality coffee.

Step 2

Leave a review. Tell everyone what you like about us, and why. Tell anything you like but the more of these we have the more chance we have of going through to the heats.

Step 3

Get all of your friend’s colleagues relative’s family members to vote too. We need your votes. Tell the world to vote for us………..please

Another week another cup of excellence auction. Would you believe me if I said there are only 7 of these a year. The past few weeks we have had four all on top of each other. This is the last of four and boy was it exiting. The longest I can remember an auction going on for and the highest spread of costs. Forget number one every one of the twenty-five farmers received over a lb straight I their pocket. I love it when this happens it great news all round. Take alook hereWe were lucky enough to be involved with lot 12 Viviano grown by Gutierrez Vasquez, Viviano. The interesting part is we are in shares with this with some Russian friends from Roster, so available here and in Moscow 

New coffees added today from the Colombian cup of excellence first auction this year. We did a post a few weeks ago CLICK HERE what we have all started refering to as granny coffee. I also was part of the jury for this one HERE

Bertha has had her farm for more than 50 years. She is a successful coffee producer and also a leader in her community. She has been a member of the Committee of coffee growers of the municipality of San Gil for many years. Her farm is a model for other producers, it is the place for training or educational meetings. She has planned the renewing process of the coffee trees gradually.

The farm is entirely technified. There is a great variety of shade trees. There is no contamination and they take good care of the environment. The farm is Rainforest Alliance certified as well, so she protects the source of fresh water properly for the welfare of the community.

The wet milling process is done under the ecological system, using the desmucilaginador. The fermentation takes less than 12 hours and the drying process is done in patios and in silos.

In the cup this coffee blew me away. As an international jury member for this competition I was lucky enough to cup it a number of times before the auction, and each time I got a really creamy cup full of butter, and fruit like sweetness, like biting into a blood orange but without the acidity.

I also got to meet this fantastic lady the day of the presentation of the awards. Very smartly dressed she looked just like my Grandma on a Sunday before church. So from now on this will be known as Grandma’s coffee. Oh yes and not the only company to bring a lot from this auction to the UK, as always we believe good coffee should be rewarded with a good price for the farmer, and we are never afraid to pay what others see as a high price in these auctions. We think it’s a bargain.