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The journal
Brewing guides, roast-day notes and the long answers to the questions we get asked across the counter — written by the people who pull the shots on Kiln Street.
Why this exists
Everything published here is written in-house — mostly by baristas, occasionally by whoever happened to be standing next to the roaster when something interesting happened. Nothing is outsourced, nothing is ghost-written.
The journal started for a practical reason. The same questions come up at the bar every week: why does the filter taste completely different from the one you had a fortnight ago, what grinder should I buy for under a hundred pounds, why is your espresso lighter than the one down the road, how long will this bag actually stay good for. A two-minute answer shouted over a steam wand is never a good answer. So we write the long one down, and then we can point at it.
Most posts fall into a handful of subjects: brewing properly at home, what really happens on a Tuesday roasting day, notes on the coffees we have just bought and why we chose them, and the occasional piece about the practicalities of running a small cafe in Shoreditch. When a post is about a coffee we are pouring right now, you will usually find it on the bar as well — the two single origins on the espresso and filter menu change every fortnight, and the roastery side of it is covered in more depth on our coffee and roasting page.
We are not trying to be a coffee magazine. There is no news desk and no publishing calendar. Posts appear when there is something worth saying: a new lot landing, a recipe that finally works, or a mistake we made that somebody else might now avoid.
Start here
Espresso, cortado, flat white or latte? Our bar lead explains the real ratios, cup sizes and milk choices so you can order at any counter with confidence.
Read the full postEverything else
Newest first. Every post carries the date it went up, roughly how long it takes to read and the subject it belongs to, so the practical ones are easy to find in a hurry.
Cold brew and iced coffee are not the same drink. Our head roaster explains what 18 hours of cold steeping changes, the caffeine truth, and a home recipe.
Read moreSingle origin is not automatically better coffee. Our head roaster on what the label actually covers, why a blend wins in milk, and how to read a bag properly.
Read moreA bar lead's candid guide to working from a cafe: the unwritten etiquette both ways, which seats have power, the quiet windows, and what a cafe is genuinely bad for.
Read moreAn hour-by-hour account of roasting day: charge temperature, first crack, why we drop the house blend late, and why nothing older than 12 days reaches the bar.
Read moreBrowse by subject
Everything we have published so far, grouped by what it is actually about. Short and useful beats long and comprehensive, so most of these run to five or six minutes.
2 posts
How it gets written
Our baristas train to Specialty Coffee Association standards and are paid above the real Living Wage. That matters here more than it might sound: the people writing these posts have been working the same machine for years, so they are describing coffee they know rather than coffee they have read about.
Roasting happens every Tuesday on a 5kg drum in the basement — around 12kg a week, small enough that one person tastes every batch. The roast log is where most of the numbers in these posts come from: charge temperature, turning point, first crack, drop weight, weight loss. When a post says a coffee rested six days before it reached a grinder, it is because the sheet says six days.
We write in plain British English, we avoid tasting-note bingo — three flavour notes per coffee, never fifteen — and we are happy to say when something is a matter of taste rather than fact. If you think we have got something wrong, tell us. More than one post has been corrected by a regular who knew better, and the correction is noted at the top rather than tidied away.
If a question is nagging at you, ask it. The ones we hear most often become posts, and the answer usually turns up at the counter first anyway.
Reading is not drinking
The bar is open seven days a week, the filter offering changes every fortnight, and there are eight rooms upstairs if you would rather not go home afterwards.
