Hello 2020. Wait, didn’t you get the memo? I’ve come back. I mean, it took a bit longer than usual: what was only meant to be a short hiatus turned into an entire year. There’s some great coffee blogs floating around nowadays, and I have no doubt that these were brilliant enough to keep you company in my absence. They sure were great fun to read in my mentally fuzzy days - so thank you, you bunch! Turns out I needed to take an entire year off to feel comfortable writing again

So, this is going to be a bit of a different one today, and I hope you like it. I get a lot of private messages from people following me on social media who read my blog, asking me where I've worked as a barista myself. So heck, I thought I'd tap into their instagram accounts, grab some photographs*, and show you. All of them are worth a visit, to be completely honest. (although, I am slightly biased I guess..) *for this blog post, I will be taking images off of each of the c

Oh, don't get me started. This was the bane of my life as a barista, and I know it frustrates baristas on end in the international industry. However, I'm not here to simply rant and complain at people, but instead I'm here to talk to you a little bit and tell you exactly why your coffee is, well, not so hot. Now, don't get this confused with cold coffee. Seriously, just don't. Your coffee is warmer than lukewarm by quite a considerable amount, but this doesn't stop many a cus

Now I'm super super duper lucky having the job that I have. I get to say that I can be that person taking photos in a coffee shop, but doing it for a living (after many years of it simply being my hobby). I've gone from not only taking professional photos for myself, but also becoming a social media manager for coffee shops. Isn't that just living the dream? 1. Lighting. Natural lighting is absolutely key to making your photos looking better, especially if you're not able to

Isn’t it just typical that when a speciality coffee shop opens up in my area, that my camera has run out of battery? I’m not going to be around Waterloo for the rest of the week, so I wanted to get this blog post out anyway so took some relatively average looking photos on my phone. It’s only a small space so hopefully it does it justice. But hey ho, sorry about the lower-than-usual quality photos. This isn’t their first site, and the name ‘Urban Baristas’ does ring a bell. H

Outpost Coffee is an up and coming, high quality coffee roasters based in Nottingham in England. Here's my review on their leading Timbe

Wellness is a huge deal at the moment, and fair enough a lot of it may be some smushy gobble-dee-goop designed to make money off the average stressed person. However, I do firmly believe that everyone should adopt small mindfulness tactics which can be implemented easily into their routines, to allow time for the simpler things in the ever-increasingly rushed and anxiety-prone world. So I thought I’d share with you my way to have ‘me-time’, as well as practice a well-deserved

Oh, I'm going there today. I'm in a down-n-out mood today, so probably shouldn't be touching upon any hardcore topics at the moment, but this is way too much of a serious and important topic to cover. And it's something which is brushed off and overlooked for the most part, which is very scary. However, before we get into this, I want to emphasise that, like many sexist parts of an industry, this does not affect everyone and anyone who is a part of the coffee industry. If you

Working in both the blogosphere and specialty coffee industry I don't go even a day usually without seeing extravagantly decorated lattes in my face. There's swans left right and centre, as well as a constant race to try and put as many 'layers' as possible on their tulip's flat white. However, more often than none I'm left sipping what is a relatively mediocre cup of 'specialty' coffee and thinking...when did espresso theory start to come second to making instagram-friendly

Ah, Birmingham. I grew up there you know? Well, I didn’t - I actually grew up in Worcestershire. However, it’s a helluva lot more easier to say I’m from Birmingham where people actually know is a place (although are hilariously still unsure of its whereabouts!) rather than saying i’m from a place which receives the response of ‘oh, like the sauce’? Birmingham was home to the first ever coffee shop I worked in, and I look back fondly at my 16 year old self who thought they wer