Author: Chris Bell

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Coffee Shop

Roasting Specialty Coffee
Small Batch Specialty Coffee RoastingAt Bell's Beans we roast in small batches of 3-8kgs of coffee at a time. The coffee is then stored to "de-gas" this is when CO2 that was produced in the beans as they were roasting escapes. This step is important as a very fresh coffee that hasn't been aloud to de-gas may taste "toasty" or sour due to the CO2 trapped in it. This is especially true with espresso as this brew method doesn't allow …
Coffee Shop

What Is “Specialty Coffee”?
Coffee is the second biggest traded commodity in the world, only second to the other black stuff oil. Coffee is traded on the stock exchange and has a “C” price, this c price is what sets the baseline for commodity coffee.The biggest risk to coffee is farmers not being able to afford to be farmers or to employ people to help on the farms. Coffee farming is very labour intensive with over 90% of all coffee being hand picked and …
Coffee Shop

Not Black Friday at Bell’s Beans
Why No Black Friday I have never really bought into the whole “black Friday” trend and have never been one to follow the trends of others, so following that ethos, I will not be doing any discounts for black Friday. Instead I will be donating 10% of all online coffee sales taken over the weekend, Friday 24th Nov - Sunday 26th Nov. There seems to be a lot of pressure put on small businesses to follow the sales trends of big businesses, and in …
Coffee Shop

2 Years As A Specialty Coffee Roaster
2 years ago I did my first roasts. 40kgs of seasoning roasts. I managed to convince a friend to "help" / make sure I didn't burn the place down and we fired up the roaster for the first time. This was the first time I'd used a coffee roaster bigger than the little gene cafe roaster I'd been home roasting 250g batches on for the previous few years. I panicked at every step esp when I thought the coffee was way …
Coffee Shop

The idea of doing coffee!
I find myself alone and walking home in the mist of the night, contemplating the day I have had amongst friends and family of friends and the misconceptions they have around coffee. The first: " I don't have one of those fancy coffee machine things, so I can't buy your coffee" No no no no no! For me, the last place to start on the road of excellent, exciting coffee is espresso! This may sound super controversial to many people, but …
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