Coffee Culturein Hastings & St Leonards
HIP introduces a new regular column by THE SECRET BARISTA, who has been touring some local coffee shops to find out more about the arcane art of making coffee
I must confess I am a bit of a coffee addict; I brew my own at home with an obsessive concentration on trying to get the most flavour I can out of the coffee beans.
It started 15 years ago when I was in my early 40s. Unusually, I hadn’t drunk a cup of instant coffee in my life as I hated that powdery after-taste. But while visiting Amsterdam and hanging out in the cafes, I smelt the wonderful flavours emanating from the strong, Dutch coffee blends that my partner was drinking – so I tried a few. The unique hit of energy from the caffeine combined with a multitude of flavours had me intrigued.
Black and strong is where my obsession started, and that’s how I continued. When I got home, I brewed cafetières with ground coffee blends. I was excited by the potential to do better, so I moved on to using a ‘stove-top’ percolator, experimenting with grinding different single-source coffees from around the world. I then got a Gaggia Classic espresso machine and went deep into ‘home brewing.
But recently, while I’ve been out and about in the cafes of Hastings and St. Leonards, I noticed the huge variety of great coffee you can get in this town.
I decided I wanted to find out more – about the coffee itself, about how to make a good brew and about how to create the right mood and atmosphere. Every good coffee shop needs a coffee obsessive leading the way, so I plan to talk to some of our local coffee artisans to see what it takes to get a great cup of coffee.
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