Love your coffee? You’ll love the coffees from Spiller & Tait, the award winning coffee suppliers that really care about their Joe.
Sometimes it can see our high streets are made up solely of opticians, charity shops, mobile phone shops and, of course, coffee shops.
Well I like coffee as much as anyone else, but I resent paying a large sum of money for it and being tutted at by a’barista’ because I don’t order fluently and fast enough, so I mostly make my coffee at home.
And there are so many ways to make it, although lacking the funds for a full-on expresso machine I mostly use a capsule device or the trusty cafetiere. Why mess with technology? Of course there are also percolators, Aeropress, siphons, automated espresso machines and stove-top espresso makers.
What coffee to buy though? Well there’s no shortage of choice, but we’ve been loving the joe that comes from Spiller & Tait. This company started on Amazon in the UK and their coffees have rapidly become some of the highest rated and best selling online, with lots of happy customers raving over the coffees as well as the company’s personal, helpful, service
Now available also from their own website, the big USP is that the coffee is sent off within seven days of it being roasted; the stuff on supermarket shelves could have been roasted weeks, if not months ago. These things matter if you’re a real coffee fan.
As does whether you buy it as beans or ready ground. Beans will always stay fresher longer than ground as there is less surface area exposed to the air; I remember this from science lessons.
However, if you drink a lot of coffee then the pre-ground stuff is handy, and of course is ground exactly to suit the bean type. Grinds do matter, a cafetiere benefits from a coarser grind than, say, coffee destined for a high pressure system. See our reviews of
- Pour Over Coffee Maker from Coffee Gator
- Shark Ninja coffee maker
- Bonavita’s drip system of coffee and kettle
All roasted beans then constantly give off CO2, that’s why better class coffee makers like Spiller & Tait pack their coffee in a bag with a valve.
This lets the CO2 out or otherwise the trapped CO2 would adversely affect the flavour. The valve is one way so no air gets back in. Once you’ve opened your coffee bean bag, always store it in a proper valve-equipped canister such as the Coffee Gator tin
So what about their coffee? Everyone’s taste in coffee varies but Spiller & Tait have plenty of choice.
Six kinds in all, Signature Blend, Classic Italian Blend, Barista Blend, Pure Columbian Huila, Organic Rainforest Blend and Sparkling Water Decaffeinated.
We tried them all, as you do when you get samples, and it was hard to pick a winner. The Signature Blend actually is a winner already, with a 1 Star Gold Award in the 2017 Great Taste Awards.
It actually wasn’t our personal favourite, although the smoothness was pleasant and there was a nutty aroma that we all liked. Certainly an excellent coffee.
Our favourite was the second we tried, Classic Italian Blend, as we love espressos and intense full bodied, slightly bitter coffee. This one made us think wistfully of Italian cafes and early starts.
The Barista Blend Coffee presumably pays homage to the doughty Aussies and Kiwis that man the pumps in UK coffee shops. It has, I suppose a more hipster kick to it, a bit of chocolate and some nuts in there plus a rich dark colour. Possibly tattoos and a beard. It may have been travelling. A nice oily bean and smooth taste.
Pure Colombian Huila comes from Columbia and we were told to expect fruity flavours and no acidity, apparently Colombian coffee can be a bit acidic. This quite an exclusive coffee and Spiller and Tait is one of the few companies selling it. We did indeed pick up fruits and the aroma was kitchen-filling
And then there’s Organic Rainforest Blend. The one that lets you save the planet, as you sit at your reclaimed wood kitchen table in North London. These are 100% Arabica and Fairtrade Rainforest Alliance Certified beans and come from Honduras. We didn’t get to taste these as, frankly, by this point we’d drunk so much coffee we were seriously on edge but it’s pretty certain they’ll be good as well as ethical.
They also make Sparkling Water Decaffeinated, but frankly why would you bother? But we can tell you it does taste like caffeinated, the “Sparkling Water” achieves 99.9% caffeine free beans without apparently affecting anything else.
Ordering is easy, the system updates you regularly on the progress of your order and arrival time and the individual packs come in a letter-box friendly format, so your coffee doesn’t get drunk by your neighbours unless you invite them. There’s free shipping on orders over £20 and10% off your first order if you join their online community.