The Coffee Page

Here at The Inversnecky we pride ourselves on serving the best cup of coffee in the North of Scotland. We are often asked how we achieve this quality. Here we are prepared to explain what we do and how we do it.

The Bean:

We use Caffe Torelli Beans to provide the basis of the coffee. The roast is a medium “Mocha” roast and gives a fine flavour suitable for drinking at anytime of the day.

The Milk:

We use locally sourced milk from the Mitchell’s Farm Dairies. It is a creamy fine tasting milk and we try to have both full cream and semi skimmed milk available. Either can be used to create a richly flavoured coffee and it really is a matter of taste as to which you prefer.

We have noticed an increase in those who are lactose intolerant recently and so try to have soya milk available. Surprisingly this makes a fine cappuccino although since it is already slightly sweetened if you do not take sugar in your coffee I would not recommend it.

The Equipment:

A high quality grinder is essential to a decent cup of joe. Additionally unless the grinding blades are regularly changed the grinder will “burn” the coffee while grinding and a bitter aftertaste will be noticeable. After some tooing and froing we decided to go with a Mazzer Luigi Senior. This quality grinder ensures an even grind and long blade life along with the ability to swap new blades in swiftly when needed (about every 6 moths or so).

Together with the grinder an efficient boiler is required. When considering what to go for an idea of the through-put is needed. Generally the bigger machine the higher through-put but also the higher cost. As Coffee is the basis of our business we looked for a reliable and quick machine. The Astoria 2 group version ticked all our boxes so we now use this semi-automatic machine. By opting for a semi-automatic one we can easily vary the strength of the coffee to match our customers needs. Often a “standard” coffee is too strong so by restricting the amount of espresso we can adjust the taste to suit. Of course this only works when we are told what the customer wishes…if you don’t tell us then how are we to know?