Friday night reflections on the week and I feel good. Some people I respect have made some lovely comments about Crankhouse both in the quality of the coffees they’ve been drinking or serving to their customers and the service they’ve received. Amongst them is a fabulous new customer The Rusty Pig in Ottery St Mary, a small village outside of Exeter owned by a well respected chef and restauranteur Robin Rea. I’ve sat at his table a few times and he’s incredibly passionate about the food he puts in front of you. Those are the sorts of customers I want because you know ‘average’’ isn’t in their vocabulary. It helps of course that his staff reflect that passion and I’m thrilled that my coffee is now being served to their customers.
Then there’s Chris (who drinks coffee). In a different life a long time ago I sat a ‘Viva Voce’ exam with a young Professor of Cybernetics then at Reading University, Kevin Warwick. He was at the forefront of neuroscience-surgcial implants and we talked (actually he talked and i listened) about implants tied in with smart buildings and smart cars. I met Chris at this years amazing London Coffee Festival setup beside each other at the La Marzocco roasters village. Chris reminds me a little of the Prof. If he could have a TDS refractometer surgically implanted with a smart contact lens that displayed the extraction percentage of every coffee he brewed or was brewed for him then he’d have it. Perhaps I should put the two of them together. Chris seems to like what i've been roasting recently which makes me feel good. Thanks Prof.
I’m lucky to live in a beautiful part of the country and that means there are always visitors popping down to the south-west on their holidays. At the beginning of the week a roaster from that little shoulder of the island to the East of Edinburgh came a visiting and popped into
Camper Coffee and drank some
Colombian El Chivero natural from Antioquia that I’d roasted. They
posted a lovely instagram which was very complimentary. That’s one of those feel good posts from a fellow roaster that gives me the warm and fuzzies. Of course it helps that it was brewed by a couple of knowledgeable and skilled baristas
@thebeardedbarista @rory.espresso.
Finally (and this is the biggie), Ollie from the Exploding Bakery
posted something that made me take a big breathe in. When
@becsta94 and I moved back to the UK from Australia we found ourselves in Exeter and the only place that served the style and quality of coffee we’d become so used to down under was the bakery. It became our Saturday treat and then more days during the week. It was as close to being back in Australia getting served a well brewed Flat White that we’d had. I’d made a few contacts whilst travelling back to the UK including the head of coffee for Boston Tea Party Andy Tucker, and Tom Sobey the owner of Origin Coffee. I asked them both about getting work in coffee and they each suggested I get a job pouring coffee, so I did. I leaned some basic skills in a couple of places and then asked Ollie if he had any hours at the best place in Exeter. He did and that was really the start of my journey in coffee. That was 6 years ago and this week the bakery are serving my coffees in both the house and the guest hoppers to their ‘mostly’ discerning customers.
Not a bad week all up.
