Beginner Home Barista Collection

£30.99

This collection contains:

1 x 250g Chocolate Brownie Blend

1 x 250g Chocolate Fondant Blend

1 x 250g Fruitcake Blend

1 x 250g Fruit & Nut Blend

Sent in a plain craft box ready to be gift-wrapped if you wish and the label on the front of each bag explains the coffee, where it comes from in the region, taste notes and brewing methods.

Ideal as a gift or to treat yourself to a selection of our best coffees with a 15% saving over buying them individually. Take out a subscription and save up to another 20% on top of that!

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Origin: Various

Roast: Medium/Dark

 

 

Four great blends, forgiving when it comes to dialing in, a great start for beginner home baristas.

Chocolate Brownie BlendA stonking rich, bold & chocolatey blend - very forgiving for espresso, and perfect for milkies! More Info

Chocolate Fondant Blend - Bold, punchy with deep luxurious slightly toasty chocolate notes, this is one you have to try! More Info

Fruitcake Blend - A delicious spicy & fruity coffee, reminiscent of Christmas cake, easy to dial in for espresso. More Info

Fruit & Nut Blend - Lovely, enjoyable & easy drinking blend of two speciality single origins, fruit & nut heaven! More Info

How to Use the Beginner Home Barista Collection

Obviously you can use these beans however you like, but if you're using them while starting to hone your home barista skills, here's a tip for how to get the best from them.

The first thing to mention, is that if you (or the person you're buying them for) have literally just got your espresso machine and haven't yet had any experience at all of dialling in beans you might want to just start out with a Kilo of the same beans, before starting out with 250g bags of different beans. 

Starting out with 1Kg of of Chocolate Brownie blend for example, and then moving on to the home barista collection box, would make things slightly easier to learning to dial in.

Decisions Decisions...

Four very nice coffees here, where do you start!?

A quick tip - I'd recommend waiting (if you can, it won't make a massive difference if you can't) until 3-5 days from roast date to start using the beans.

You'll notice they're all roasted on the day of despatch, or in some cases one or two of them may have been roasted the day before, so leaving them a few days to degas (release CO2) is best practice. 

When it comes to the order to use them, if you've already had one of these beans, you'll be familiar with them, so that would be a good starting point. 

If not, I'd start out with Chocolate Brownie or Chocolate fondant, these are the most forgiving beans in the box.

Once you've worked your way through these two, I'd move on to Fruit Cake, you'll find a slightly finder grind size will help here, and maybe just a slightly bigger ratio.

The most challenging bean in the box is Fruit & Nut blend, they're perfect for the last bag to be used from the box. You'll find these benefit from a slightly finer grind than fruitcake blend, and if your machine has adjustable brew temp, a notch hotter would be a good idea.

 

The best approach to beginning to dial in is to see ratio and grind size as your two main variables to adjust, and to leave everything else the same, most of the time. Although, if your machine has adjustable brew temperature, keep in mind that when you're making quite a big jump in roast profile, a change in brew temp may be very useful.

Ratio is the relationship between the dose weight and the amount of espresso, so pulling a bigger shot with the same dose, increases the ratio. 

If you're getting unwanted, unpleasant acidity in the shot, this is the taste of under extraction, so you need to extract more.

If you just pull a bigger shot with the same dose, you'll extract more, easy peasy. However when you do this you're increasing the extraction but also you're reducing the intensity and the body. 

This is why we'd usually focus mainly on adjusting the grind finer in order to extract more, so that we don't sacrifice intensity or mouthfeel, but also an increased brew temperature will lead to a greater extraction. 

Up to a certain point, you can get away with sacrificing a small amount of intensity and body without an overall detriment to the cup quality, so most of the time, especially with more entry level grinders or integrated grinder machines, using ratio in addition to grind size is a great approach. 

An example of how I'd go about this, is that I'd start out by anticipating a required grind size adjustment based on the next coffee I'm using (this comes with practice), and I'd pull a shot at around a 1:2 ratio, for example about 40ml of espresso from about 18g of coffee.

I'd then be led in part by the numbers (shot time) but mainly by taste, and I'll then change one thing at a time, either the ratio or the grind size, until I think I've nailed the balance. 

If this approach doesn't seem to be working, sometimes I'll make an adjustment to the brew temperature, if I'm using a machine with adjustable temp, although (again this comes with experience) I'll often start out by making a temp adjustment if I know the beans I've just opened are quite a bit different.

For loads more on this see Kev's dialling in playlist.

How It Tastes

Chocolate Brownie Blend - A punchy yet balanced coffee with lots of rich milk and dark chocolate notes, really sings as the base for milkies.

Chocolate Fondant Blend - The taste of dark, rich oozing chocolate fondant - deep dark chocolate with slightly toasty notes, huge crowd-pleaser!

Fruitcake Blend - Nutty, spicy & fruity, reminiscent of Christmas cake, easy to dial in for espresso.

Fruit & Nut Blend - Notes of milk chocolate and hazelnuts balanced with a fruity acidity, lovely easy drinking coffee.

Four mega tasty blends

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE: BRAZIL ETHIOPIA & INDIA
A blend of carefully chosen high quality coffees including Brazilian Santos Arabica, Ethiopian Djimmah Arabica and Indian Cherry Robusta.

CHOCOLATE FONDANT: BRAZIL ETHIOPIA & INDIA
The same blend of beans but blended differently for a more intense taste profile.

FRUITCAKE BLEND: SUMATRA, HONDURAS & ETHIOPIA + INDIA
A blend of three Arabicas + Indian cherry Robusta to amplify the intensity.

FRUIT & NUT BLEND: FAZENDA MIO & TARRAZÚ CO-OP
Fazenda Mio is a family-owned farm covering almost 1600 hectares between Southern Minas Gerais and the Mogiana highlands.

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Customer Reviews

Based on 30 reviews
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H
H.M.

First time I’ve bought fresh roasted coffee beans, and I’m impressed with the quality and fast delivery.🙂

K
Kev W.
A really good selection - just do it.

Do you have information overload? Just stop, use the new customer code for 25 percent off, and buy this for yourself. They're all nice, and different enough that you'll know why it is that you'll prefer one to another for any given mood.. And that will help you work out what to look out for when you're next buying. Don't be put off that these are blends - they're really good - and try them in the order that Kev suggests on the product page. Magic :-)

M
Matthew P.
Great coffee

After going down the home barista rabbit hole, Kev’s blog and YouTube channel were a great resource. When I saw his link for CoffeeWorks I thought I’d get me some beans! Ordered the Beginner Home Barista Collection with the initial discount code and very happy with the results. Two out four bags gone and I’ll decide on a favourite for future orders after trying the other two. I’ll look at some local businesses too to support them but CoffeeWorks products are well worthy of your hard earned pennies.

I
Ian D.
Great for a new starter

This was a great way to start with having 4 packs of different beans at 250 gram as if. You don’t like one it’s not a big problem and when you find the ones you like you can purchase the bigger pack would very much recommend as we had some great coffee will buy again

L
Lee F.
A wonderful start for my barrista journey

Great coffees, very distinct from each other and lovely to work with. Will last me a while too as I tend to use them as treats!

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