Software History

Full Court Press, a coffee roastery based in Bristol, has been on my radar for a while. I've read Coffee: A Modern Field Guide, the book written by the founder. I have seen they have a stellar reputation through Instagram.

Fortitude Coffee Roasters, which has two cafes in Edinburgh, is deeply rooted in the Scottish coffee scene. In addition to running two cafes, Fortitude roasts its own beans. I was curious about how Fortitude roasts their coffee so I decided to reach out to their team. Bruce, their head roaster, got back to me to share some insights about Foritude.

I have never written a review of a book before. I was reading the Caffeine Galore blog and I saw a review of a coffee book that was short and eloquent. I wondered whether, instead of writing paragraphs upon paragraphs about a book I've read, I could write a short summary in this vein.

A few weeks ago I visited South Queensferry, the home of Brew Culture Coffee and Tea. I had wanted to walk over the Forth Road Bridge and also visit Brew Culture, which opened earlier this year as the only speciality coffee shop in the area. I had previously interviewed the owner, Robert, about his blog a few months prior, but I wanted to ask him a few questions about starting his coffee shop. I sent Robert some questions over email which he kindly responded to. I hope you enjoy the interview.

When I was at Union Brew Lab on Saturday, the coffee I ordered was given to me in a latte art pitcher. I was also given a mug into which I could pour the coffee on my own. I liked this experience because the act of pouring coffee into a mug, I found, was soothing. There's something nice about pouring coffee that has already been prepared into a mug, ready for you to drink. I was able to pour coffee from the pitcher into my mug three or so times before I was out of coffee because the mug I was given was quite small (and there was quite a bit of coffee in the pitcher, to be fair).

Today (which is Saturday. I usually post blog posts a couple of days after I write them because I either: forget to post a blog post or have other articles to post.) I visited four speciality coffee shops in Edinburgh. In doing so, I was able to experience four different service interactions with coffee shops. I just started thinking to myself that today I saw some interesting things so I wanted to share them on my blog.

Scotland is a country in the United Kingdom. Scotland has a rich speciality coffee culture, with roasteries and coffee shops around the country. Edinburgh and Glasgow are home to many speciality coffee shops. There is also a diverse range of eateries around the country.

Fortitude Coffee is a speciality coffee business based in Edinburgh, Scotland, serving coffee from two cafes in the city and roasting coffee for sale online and in their stores.

Breakfast and Coffee is a place to share your breakfast and coffee recommendations and find new eateries to visit. This page describes how the wiki is built. For information on the community and what to share on the wiki, please refer to the home page.

There is something blissful about awaking naturally before your alarm is scheduled to go off for the day. I woke up on my own terms, joyfully surprised given my propensity to depend on multiple alarms in the morning.

Union Brew Lab is a speciality coffee shop situated on 6-8 South College Street, Edinburgh. Union Brew Lab is owned by Union Hand-Roasted, a large UK speciality coffee roastery.

You can submit a post to Breakfast and Coffee by creating a new article on the wiki web page or by publishing a wiki entry on your own site and syndicating your post to the wiki using Webmentions.

The Milkman is a speciality coffee business with two locations on Cockburn Street in the City of Edinburgh. Both of The Milkman cafes have a warm and cosy aesthetic.

Cairngorm Coffee is a speciality coffee roastery that owns two cafes in the City of Edinburgh, well-known for serving delicious toasties at its locations.

This interview series actually started with me chatting with coffee bloggers, who represented the intersection of three of my interests: websites, writing, and coffee. Earlier this year, I saw that there was a new speciality coffee blog on the scene, Mandy's Daily Grind, and I had to reach out to learn more about the project.

When I say

Papercup Coffee Roasters, based in Glasgow, piqued my interest on Instagram. Curious to learn more, I reached out over email and found myself learning about the worlds of roasting, quality control, and production. In this interview, I share what Davide, the wholesale manager at Papercup, had to say about a few of my questions. I hope you enjoy our chat.

For over the holiday season, I purchased two bags of coffee from The Good Coffee Cartel. Well, I should say canisters rather than bags. Their coffee comes in reusable canisters and you can request a refill if you live near their store. One of the canisters I purchased was their Ethopia Adado coffee, the first coffee they have ordered for a second time.

I have turned to other sites for inspiration on what I should include and leave out in my coffee reviews. One of the sites I've really enjoyed reading over the last few months is The Pourover. The owner of The Pourover, Fionn, was based in Scotland, reviewing many Scottish cafes and beans. Fionn then moved away to Michigan and has been publishing weekly posts on coffee news.

Note: I wrote this blog post before Christmas 2020 and never got around to publishing it at the time.

This evening, a contestant on The Chase UK (one of my favourite television programmes) was asked the following question:

On a cold Sunday morning, Finca La Esperanza, a coffee sourced from Guatemala and sold by Steampunk Coffee, kept me warm. While it may be too icy to go out for a walk, I was more than happy to relax and ponder a new Guatemalan coffee I've been trying recently.

When I read

I consume a large percentage of my online content using RSS. It was not always this way. For a long time, I relied on algorithms to tell me what to read. I put my faith in social media and believed that if I scrolled long enough I'd eventually find something interesting to read. I did sometimes find good articles. Mostly, I found articles that were popular. I didn't discover any real gems.

In the Bonus Homebrew Website Club meeting last weekend, I was reminded of the IndieWeb social polls idea I had a while back. I cannot quite remember what reminded me of the idea but I mentioned it in the meeting anyway. My idea was to use webmentions to support social polling. By using Webmentions, I could accept votes to a poll from individual personal websites. My site, or perhaps a third-party service I create, would then aggregate those polls and produce a clean report showing the number and percentage of votes each option in the poll had earned.

Peet's Coffee, Tea and Spices was one of the inspirations behind Starbucks. I have read this from many sources. Indeed, the Starbucks we know today does not resemble the initial company. It was Howard Schultz who pioneered the idea of rapid growth. The founders of Starbucks based their vision of the business on what they had seen from Alfred Peet, the owner of Peet's based in Berkeley, California. But I had no idea that Starbucks was only one of many businesses who benefited—directly or indirectly—from Alfred Peet and his devotion to selling high-quality coffee.

In The Song, published earlier today, I noted:

I love interjecting facts about Scotland into discussions where I can. Recently, I was in a discussion about trees, where I noted my favourite type of tree is the palm tree. I would be remiss if I didn't note that Scotland has a few palm trees.

With the taste of a packaged okonomiyaki in my mouth, I am excited to announce I am starting a podcast. [^1]