Tag: Wholesale Coffee Beans

Coffee flavoured vodka

Posted on by Sara Walker

vodkaIf you’re feeling a little tired after the excitement of Christmas and New Year, treat yourself to a small tot of our coffee-infused vodka as the perfect pick-me-up.

Vodka is a particularly good partner for the strong flavouring of coffee, as it’s not strongly flavoured itself. You’ll need:

  • A bottle of vodka
  • About 30 good quality ready-roasted coffee beans
  • A teaspoon of sugar

Start by cracking the coffee beans. This is most easily done in a pestle and mortar, or you can put the beans in a plastic bag and gently crush them with a rolling pin or the back of a spoon. You’re not trying to make coffee grounds, only to open the beans enough to let the flavour infuse.

Place the beans and the sugar in a clean, sterilised bottle or jar (you can re-use the empty vodka bottle if you decant the liquid into a secondary container first. Make sure it’s thoroughly clean, though.) Pour the vodka over the beans until they float on top of the liquid. Seal the bottle tightly, and shake it vigorously for 30 seconds.

Put the bottle in a cool dark place, and every day for five days shake it vigorously.

When the five days are up, the liquid should look a uniform clear brown colour. The final stage is to filter out the coffee beans.

Please a clean muslin cloth or tea towel over a large bowl to make a filter, and tape it round so that it’s taut. Very slowly, pour the vodka over the filter. The coffee beans may come out in a rush, so be ready! Once all the vodka has gone through the filter, remove the cloth, wash out and sterilise the original bottle and pour the vodka back in.

Taste the vodka. If the coffee flavour isn’t as strong as you’d like, you can start the process again by adding more crushed beans. If it’s a little too strong, dilute the liquid with some plain vodka.

For great quality coffee beans at wholesale prices, visit our coffee beans page.

Winter Blues and Nights as Dark as Coffee

Posted on by Sara Walker

If you live in the northern hemisphere the days are a lot shorter now, the nights longer, the air colder and Christmas cheer the thing to keep you awake and happy, apart from, of course, coffee. In the blistering cold and pitch black darkness you really do need a thing or two to keep you going. We have come up with various ideas for how to keep ourselves awake and happy during the day.

One of our fabulous ideas (if we may say so ourselves) is to combine the smell of gingerbread with coffee. Scent is a feel good factor and most people tend to wake up at the smell of fresh roasted coffee beans. Of course you need some light as well, so our recommendation is to get yourself a mighty nice gingerbread house, which you can put tea candles in. Next to it you keep a candle holder with coffee beans in it and a candle (be sure to watch this if you use a regular candle rather than a tea light, as the beans can catch fire when the candle get to the level of the beans!).

Year of Crafts 2013:  February Edition Coffee Bean Candle Holders Coffee Bean Candle Holders. Very easy, and the aroma is awesome.#DIY: #Coffee Bean #Candle Hurricane Project
The other feel-good factor you need is of course fresh roasted coffee beans in your cup – in other words: a fresh cup of java. If you want to make it to taste like Christmas you can add some cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg (potentially a dash of cardamom too), as well as a little bit of honey or maple syrup.

To really perk you up in the darkness serve your coffee with some chocolate. You can either turn it into a Mocha, have a square of really good quality dark chocolate with it, or a slice of some dark chocolate cake. The darker the better for added antioxidants (fight the cold system!) and if you can find some cake that’s sweetened by honey, or maple syrup, rather than sugar. In the two coming posts we will teach share a raw chocolate recipe, and a chocolate cake that is sweetened in this way.

Apart from fresh roasted coffee beans and divine chocolate, what will keep you going through winter is plenty of rest, exercise, fruits, vegetables, walks in the outdoors, and some vitamins, like added vitamin D in lieu of sunshine.

If you want to buy coffee for your winter blues, you can buy coffee online through our shop. We offer great prices and great coffee (that in and of itself should cheer you up instantly!).

Monsooned Malibar coffee

Posted on by Sara Walker

indiaHave you ever tried ‘monsoon coffee’? Also called ‘monsooned Malabar coffee’, it refers to coffee beans subjected to a particular process, designed to produce an individual taste. Unique to the Malabar coast in the subcontinent of India, the coffee beans used in this process are harvested then left exposed to the seasonal monsoon rain and winds for up to four months.

The constant wetting and drying process causes the beans to swell and lose any acidity, which apparently gives a far smoother, mellower flavour once the coffee beans are brewed.

The history of the process, which can be applied to any type of bean, dates back hundreds of years. When coffee beans were first brought to Europe from India, they travelled by sea, sometimes taking six months to complete the voyage. The long exposure to humidity and sea weather caused the beans to age from the normal freshly-picked green to a pale yellow, and caused corresponding differences in the taste of the coffee. As transportation times improved, the beans were less affected – and legend has it that Europeans began to notice and remark on the difference in flavour. Upon investigation, it was determined that the variation in humidity appeared to have a positive effect on the coffee, and experiments were made to replicate the conditions by exposing the beans to monsoon conditions.

The modern process is very carefully managed, and involves spreading, raking and turning the harvested beans to ensure that they absorb the moisture evenly. When it’s ready, the bean becomes significantly larger and turns pale golden in colour. Once packaged, the beans are roasted and brewed as usual.

Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, you won’t find monsoon coffee – but you will find a great range of top quality coffee beans, all offering fantastic value for money. For more information, visit our coffee beans page.

Bonfire coffee and treacle toffee

Posted on by Sara Walker

fireIt’ll soon be November 5th: traditional time of bonfires, fireworks, parkin cake, treacle toffee and, knowing the British weather, hot drinks. Keep yourself and your customers warm on a chilly night with our special gingerbread coffee and treacle toffee recipes.

Gingerbread coffee (makes six servings)

In a small, heatproof bowl, mix six tablespoons of treacle, one heaped teaspoon of ginger and four tablespoons of brown sugar. Put in the microwave and melt together for 30 – 40 seconds, until well combined. Divide the mixture evenly between six sturdy mugs, suitable for outside use. Pour on a little black coffee made from freshly roasted and ground coffee beans, and stir vigorously to dissolve the spice mixture. Fill the cups with coffee until about 2/3 full. Add milk or cream, then top with a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkling of extra ginger.

Treacle toffee

  • 450g dark brown soft sugar
  • 150ml water
  • 75g unsalted butter
  • 125g treacle
  • 75g golden syrup

Grease a shallow18cm square baking, and line it with greaseproof paper, silicone paper or aluminium foil. If you use foil, press it down carefully into all the corners of the tin.

Using your largest pan (a preserving or maslin pan is ideal), heat the sugar and water together until the sugar has dissolved. Stir the mixture a couple of times to make sure there are no remaining sugar crystals. Add all the remaining ingredients and allow to heat for a few minutes to soften, then stir a couple of times. Let the mixture come to the boil, and watch it carefully – it will foam up inside the pan, and if your pan is too small you risk a treacle-flavoured sugar flood!

Using a sugar thermometer, test for the ‘soft crack’ stage (132 to 143 degrees centigrade) – this will be marked on the thermometer. Once it’s reached this point, pour the mixture carefully into the prepared tin, making sure it’s evenly spread. Mark it into squares with a knife (greasing the knife blade first will make this easier).

Leave the tin at room temperature until the toffee is completely set, then break it into pieces and store in an airtight tin until required.

Serve with gingerbread coffee. For the best coffee beans for use in all your recipes, browse our range at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk

What makes a premium coffee blend?

Posted on by Sara Walker

tunki-blendYou’ve probably noticed packets of coffee in your local supermarket labelled ‘premium blend’, and may have wondered just how these luxury blends differ from standard coffee beans, and what you’re getting for your money.

What is a blend?

A bag of coffee with the word ‘blend’ on the side means that the contents are a mixture of different roasts, origins or tastes of coffee, blended together for a balanced taste. As a natural product, coffee varies season by season, depending on the weather and growing conditions. An experienced blender can produce a consistent blend year after year by adjusting the beans slightly, to reduce or increase any acidity.

How are blends made?

Of the two types of commercial coffee bean, Robustica are grown at lower altitudes and have a stronger, less subtle flavour, while Arabica are considered to be higher quality. The most straightforward blends use a mixture of the two types in various proportions to achieve the right taste and quality for their brew.

What is a premium blend?

Although the term ‘premium’ isn’t a standard, a blend marketed as ‘luxury’ or ‘premium’ should contain a high proportion of of Arabica, or even be 100% Arabica. Using pure Robustica produces a lower quality drink, which is mostly used for cheaper instant coffee, and most standard blends are a mixture of both.

Tunki coffee beans

With all this in mind, we’re very excited about our new product, Tunki coffee beans. Made from 100% Arabica, organic coffee beans, this is a single origin, true gourmet coffee, which is grown 1300-1800 metres above sea level in the Peruvian Andes. A full-bodied coffee with a floral aroma and undertones of chocolate and treacle, if you’ve never tried a premium blend before you won’t believe the difference. Visit our website for a sample bag, and to buy your coffee beans online.

Would you drink coffee from an elephant’s bum?

Posted on by Sara Walker

We love a good bargain in the UK which is why at the Wholesale Coffee Company, the products we supply such as commercial coffee machines, and coffee bean supplies are excellently priced without the quality being compromised.

But, not everyone loves a bargain. There’s a coffee shop in Melbourne selling coffee for $25 a cup. The Geisha coffee, also nick-named the ‘God shot’ takes four minutes to make and the brewing process involves bunsen burners  and is said to look a bit like a school science project. The result is a coffee that tastes rather like tea with a jasmine and strawberry aroma – intriguing.

Moving things up a notch to the Maldives – home to the world’s most expensive coffee beans – is the elephant dung coffee, going for about $50 a cup. It sounds like something from Brass Eye, but coffee from an elephant’s bum can be found on the menu at Antara Resorts in the Maldives and Antantara’s Golden Triangle property in Thailand.

The coffee beans, called ‘Black Ivory’ are being sold for a massive $1,100 per kilo, the equivalent of £693.11 – all because they’ve passed through the bum of an elephant. But it’s not just about the gimmick.

Coffee beans that have been naturally refined by elephants are less bitter because during the digestion period, the elephant enzymes break the coffee protein down as it’s the protein in coffee beans that’s responsible for the bitter taste. The outcome is a coffee with a chocolate, floral, nutty aroma with traces of red berry and spice.

It doesn’t end with elephants though – there are other similarly if not more bizarre and fascinating coffee bean creations out there such as civet coffee which is made from the poo of civet cats, coffee beans made from deer dung and finally, there’s even a special breed of bat that can harvest coffee.

Coffee Table Book Ideas

Posted on by Sara Walker

Top 10 Coffee Table Books Ideas

Once you’re stocked up on your coffee bean supplies and you’ve made yourself a fresh brew and some chocolate brownies, relax and enjoy one of these coffee table books.  Or, use them if you’ve got guests over for coffee and the conversation runs dry.

  1. The Art of Looking Sideways

This is the ultimate coffee table book featuring collections of anecdotes, images and interesting facts – all beautifully presented to form a coffee table experience that goes beyond being just a book.

  1. The Earth from the Air

This fascinating photography book features almost 200 images taken from helicopters flying over 75 different countries around the world. Enjoy your coffee whilst gazing at photos of lush coffee bean plantations, patchwork quilt landscapes and polka dot like crowds.

  1. Monsters in the Movies

If you’re a film fan, Monsters in Movies is an epic collection of film stills of the greatest movie monsters of all time. Sip your coffee on the edge of your seat as you work through some beautifully scary illustrations and photographs.

  1. Unseen Vogue

Unseen Vogue takes you on a journey from the 1920’s to 2004 and features over 1, 000, 000 photographs, annotated contact sheets and unedited film that never made it into Vogue – a must if you’re into fashion and photography.

  1. Post Secret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives

Laugh, feel inspired, shocked and more when you flick through this stunning book, featuring postcards with handwritten secrets from real people. Post Secret is irresistibly addictive, a great conversation starter and perfect to flick through with a hot mug of coffee.

  1. The Greatest Album Covers of All Time

Feel nostalgic leafing through this stunning book filled with 500 of the greatest album covers of all time from 1956 to 2005. Rock, pop, blues and more, this beautifully illustrated book is the ultimate pick for music buffs all over the world.

  1. Sports Illustrated: Athlete

Sports photographer, Walter Ross showcases some of the world’s most iconic sporting photographs from the last couple of decades. From Michael Jordan’s ‘Blue Dunk’ shot to images of Tiger Woods, this is a must for any sport enthusiast.

  1. Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Experiences for a Lifetime

Have you always wanted to explore the world? Feel inspired as you flick through images of paradise beaches, snow-capped mountains and tropical rainforests. Follow the suggestions or create your own ‘to do’ list.

  1. Vitamin Green

Vitamin Green brings sustainable design and living to a new level and shows us what really can be achieved with our future buildings. It’s full of inspirational photographs, ideas for designers and consumers and even DIY projects.

  1. I Love Coffee: Over 100 Easy and Delicious Coffee Drinks

Our list wouldn’t be complete without an actual coffee table book all about coffee. Jam packed with amusing anecdotes, colour photographs and of course lots of yummy coffee drink recipes, this book will inspire you to start stocking up on your coffee bean supplies.

Composting With Coffee

Posted on by Sara Walker

Composting with coffee

If you use commercial coffee machines on a daily basis, you’ll know how much waste those freshly-ground coffee beans can produce. Those grounds aren’t really waste, though – they’re full of nutrients that plants love, so instead of tipping them into the bin, you could try using them in the garden.

Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen, which means they’ll help a compost heap to decompose more quickly – and you can even throw the paper filters on the heap too. If you don’t have a compost heap, you can spread the grounds directly onto the soil as a mulch. Rainwater will wash the nutrients out of the coffee and into the soil, and a thick layer of grounds will help warm the soil and protect delicate plants or bulbs. In addition, slugs and snails aren’t as fond of caffeine as we are, and faced with a layer of coffee mulch might decide to quit your garden for easier pickings. Using coffee as a mulch can also help to deter neighbouring cats from using your garden as a litter tray, as they’re said to dislike the strong smell.

If you don’t have a compost heap or flower beds, treat your window box plants or tubs to an occasional feed made with coffee grounds. Dilute a few good handfuls of grounds around 1:40 with lukewarm water to produce a feed that’s rich in nitrogens. Plants with dark green leaves tend to love nitrogen, and will be particularly grateful for a little leftover coffee. These plants include rhododendrons, camellias and hydrangeas as well as vegetable plants such as Brussels sprouts and rhubarb.

If your garden is tiny or non-existent, or you don’t think you’ve got green fingers, why not put a sign up offering leftover grounds to local gardeners – it’s a shame to let all those lovely nutrients go to waste.

Visit www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk for commercial coffee machines and coffee supplies with next day UK delivery.

What kind of coffee drink are you?

Posted on by Sara Walker

What kind of coffee drink are you?

Once it was just coffee; then in the 1600s, a French doctor added milk – the latte was born. Fast forward to today and there are now dozens of coffee based drinks to feast on – from the caramel latte (skinny or with soy) to the mocha in a clear glass. What kind of coffee drink are you?

Black Coffee – no milk – maybe a sugar or two – but never instant

If you’re partial to a freshly brewed black coffee made from your own good quality coffee beans, you probably have opinions, an intellectual outlook and sophisticated tastes. Your sense of humour is dry, you’ve got a quick wit and you hate trashy T.V. You’re not a snob – you just have good taste.

Espresso – or anything – as long as it’s strong

On the ball and moving it in the right direction is the best way to describe you. You’re an entrepreneur – a career focussed go-getter on a mission and nothing’s going to get in your way. It’s either this or the clock on your office wall has reached 3pm, you’re hung-over and you’re about to drift into a deep sleep on top of your mouse mat. If it’s the latter, you’ll take any coffee that’s to hand – from one of the coffee machines, instant… as long as it’s strong.

Mocha – served in a clear glass

You’re not a huge coffee lover, but you’ve been invited out for coffee with Sue from up the road and she loves coffee. So you order a mocha, but you’d actually prefer a hot chocolate but mocha seems like a good compromise and it looks nice served in a glass cup.

Instant Coffee – out of choice – not laziness

You’re straightforward, down to earth and practical. A coffee is a coffee and you can’t understand why there are now so many different types. You think that anyone ordering a cinnamon skinny/ soy latte, for example, is just trying to show off – you’re not impressed.

Syrup (Caramel, vanilla, toffee…) Latte – as long as it’s sweet

Add some complementary pick ‘n’ mix sweets to your order – in a bag or on the saucer and you’re happy for the rest of the day or at least the next couple of hours. You appreciate the little things, you’re a lover of surprises and you love life best when no two days are the same.

And there we have it – a small descriptive selection of some popular coffee drinks and the kinds of people who drink them. If you have some suggestions for the list, please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

For more information on commercial coffee machines and coffee beans visit our website www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk