All posts in February 2019

An Award Winning Change – Birchall Tea Selection at Allington Café

Birchall is a London based company with tea estates in Africa and 140 years of trading experience under their belt.

Their teas are 100% pure main grade tea leaf (no stalks, dust or powder added). The Perfect Pick means the farmers only pick the soft leaves and the buds each time. Your Birchall Breakfast Tea produces a strong, golden infusion with a depth of flavour.

It goes without saying that we love local produce and products grown and brought to us in a socially responsible way. All the teas served in the café are Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance… it is nice to know our pennies are making a difference in other people’s lives.

In the café we use the premium quality plastic free Prism tea bags. These are made from a biodegradable corn starch called “SoilOn”. The distinct shape and the unique biodegradable mesh netting allow for the purest infusion.

Apart from Birchall’s breakfast tea we offer a selection of award winning infusions. 90% of our tea selection won the Great Taste Awards and teas like Great Rift Breakfast Blend have received honours for 8 years in a row.

We hope you will enjoy your cup of tea with us!

Feb 27, 2019
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Decaf coffee 101

Let’s start with the obvious. Caffeine is a naturally occurring part of the coffee bean. In order to extract caffeine from the bean you have to undertake an unnatural process which often results in compromised taste and quality. Yes, those cups of coffee that taste like burnt tobacco.

The challenge lies in only removing the caffeine from the bean and leaving the other 1000 chemicals responsible for the flavour intact. All decaffeinating processes use some sort of decaffeinating agent (such as methylene chloride, activated charcoal, CO2, or ethyl acetate). I am not going to bore you with the details of these processes, just tell you what you don’t want in your buzz free cup: no harsh chemicals and no brittle, tasteless little beans.

If you take the caffeine out, make it worthwhile!

Here is our solution, we use: Sugarcane Decaf Espresso

The green coffee bean is steamed and soaked in water with ethyl acetates (EA). The EA is a compound extracted from locally grown and fermented sugar cane – because of the impracticality of gathering natural ethyl acetate and its cost, in lots of other products the chemical used for decaffeination is synthetic. The result is a naturally decaffeinated bean with the ability to retain flavour. In our case: blackcurrant, brown sugar and cocoa.

Feb 21, 2019
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NEW PARTNERS ON BOARD – EXTRACT COFFEE ROASTERS

We are happy to announce that we have teamed up with Extract Coffee Roasters in pursuit of the best coffee blend in the South West.

Yes, we have done this rather sneakily and our lovely customers have been enjoying Extract’s Rocket Espresso for a few days now. 100% Fairtrade, organic arabica beans with hints of cocoa, caramel and black cherry.  So, let me introduce the company who launched the Rocket at Allington Café.

Extract is a Bristol based company and they have been around for 10 years. They have a wealth of knowledge from buying beans, to roasting it to perfection and providing much needed support and training to businesses.

Why have we chosen Extract?

To stay true to the ethos of the business we like to work with local businesses who share the same values as us. Coffee is never going to be a solely homegrown product and we want to make sure our coffee beans are sourced ethically. Extract does this for us with amazing knowledge and passion towards the raw product.

The power of your morning cuppa

We fuel your day with Extarct’s Rocket Espresso.  Rocket is founded on direct relationship with a positive impact on the farmers and their communities. The beans in your Rocket come from Peru and Columbia, where farmers receive equipment and support to improve coffee quality and introduce new varieties. Your morning coffee is shaping communities and improving the life of people on the other side of the globe. Hasn’t that cup of coffee just got even better?

See you around!

Feb 19, 2019
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