This is the last installment in our little scholastic selection of blog posts, to highlight our ethos and to tell customers just how we do things at foureighty™ in Shenfield.
If you have enjoyed this series by owner, Mat Bolton, please do keep visiting the blog, as we’ve got plenty more to talk about over the coming months.
Including some more events for the future, new offerings of an edible nature, and the exploration of possible libations.
Yep, we’re being a little bit cryptic here but it all amounts to exciting stuff.
In the meantime, let roundup on the most important subject of all: Coffee
Size Matters!
Each cup of coffee we make contains 36 grams of coffee extraction, this is the basis of every drink we serve unless you request a single shot drink with your barista. So, basically the difference between a macchiato and a latte is the amount of milk that is used in each drink and it’s application
Here’s a layman’s breakdown of each drink and it’s content:
Double espresso - the pure basis of each drink, 36 grams of coffee extract
Macchiato - the same as a double espresso but with milk foam added to the top of the drink
Cortardo - a double espresso with a small ‘cut’ of milk.
Flat White - a double shot with steamed milk, a shorter drink at 6 ounces gives you all the delicious coffee flavours but in a more intense way than a latte.
Latte - a double shot with steamed milk we serve in two sizes; 8 and 10 ounce
We never pour drinks larger than a 10 ounce as you lose pretty much all of the true coffee flavours and end up (in our humble opinion) with slightly coffee flavoured warm milk.
Any more questions at the back?
We often get asked about flavoured coffee, such as vanilla or caramel latte, and the simple answer is: We don’t do them. We don’t use syrups. We never have, and we never will.
Again, this is to do with early coffee culture in the UK and for a long time, we Brits were used to drinking poor quality bitter coffee. Essentially coffee made using poor quality beans, produced on ineffective machines that aren’t clean will cause bitterness, which is why, as a nation we tend to use sugar or syrup to mask.
We take more than a few steps to ensure this doesn’t happen.
Fresh beans
Our beans arrived from Amsterdam with a ‘roasted on’ date. As a general rule of thumb we won’t use these beans until at least seven days after the roast date.
The reason for this is that roasted beans need time to ‘de-gas’.All roasted beans continue to give off CO2 after roasting, after a week has passed the beans are at their very best and will hold their sweet spot for around three months. Truly fresh beans have a natural sweetness, which will only exponentially improve your coffee experience. If you’re a sugar taker in your coffee we would urge you to try it without, you might be surprised!
Clean equipment
We close at 5pm everyday, but say you wandered past at 5:30pm you will notice our that out expert baristas are still hard at work, dismantling the machine and rigorously and scrupulously cleaning the inside of the group heads, and the hot water flow lines inside the espresso machine itself, if left unchecked these old grounds will cause bitterness.
Water Filtration
We use a built in water filtration system to ensure the water used in each drink is completely fresh and free of impurities.
Locally produced organic milk
We are supplied with milk by Bradfields in Wickford, unbelievably the only independent dairy farm left in Essex. They have a herd of Holstein Fresian cows that are free to graze the pastures around the farm. Established 101 years ago, every care and attention is paid to their beloved livestock so they produce the freshest milk which is delivered direct to us on a bi-daily basis.
All of these combined factors will give you a totally non-bitter coffee experience.
Coffee is a like a fine Scotch
The analogy I like the best will ring true to the whisky drinkers among you; you wouldn’t mix a 21 year old single malt scotch with a coke, it’s exactly the same for our extremely high quality coffee.
Not that we would ever tell you how to have your drink your way, but it’s about standards for us.
It’s never ‘just’ a cup of coffee.