Bags of beans ☕

It’s only just been a year since we re-launched the Grumpy Mule website & webshop. I hope you’ll agree it’s been a great improvement with the addition of some new functionality, brew guides, massively improved visuals, much more coffee information and the launch of the seasonal roast to order coffees as well.  Add this to the new delivery boxes, and some new goodies coming soon and we hope to make it even better.

Every now and again it’s good to review what works and what doesn’t and with that in mind we’ve come to the decision that from 13^th July we will no longer be offering espresso grind on the majority of our coffees.

What coffees are affected:

In terms of pre-ground espresso grind, the options will be pretty limited. We are about to launch a pre ground version of the popular Organic Espresso Landscape ‘Espresso Ground’ which is designed to be ground and packed immediately as espresso grind and comes with all the benefits of being produced specifically for that purpose including nitrogen flushing and very large commercial grinder burrs producing a much more consistent grind.

Other than that, all other coffees will be offered only as beans only if in the seasonal roast to order range (the brown bags), or as beans or ‘omni’ grind in the retail range (the black & orange bags).

Obviously, if you have a grinder, you are not affected at all – in fact, grind fresh, drink little and often is exactly how we think coffee should be enjoyed!

Why?

We used to re-open bags of beans to grind for espresso, and although care was taken over this it still meant that there were some issues:

• The bags don’t always look great when sealed back up;
• If the coffee was from the retail range we would open the bag to grind it, but that just means the inert nitrogen used to keep the coffee fresh was lost, so the coffee wouldn’t last as long;
• It’s nearly impossible on a bag by bag basis to get the grind correct for the individual machines, preferred doses and conditions in peoples kitchens;
• Ground coffee goes state significantly more quickly than whole beans. A study a few years back demonstrated that 60% of the aromatics are lost in the first 15 minutes after grinding – and this is even more pronounced for the finer espresso grind. Essentially your coffee was going to arrive stale and that’s just not good enough.
• Only a surprisingly small number of you were actually requesting this option.
• We really don’t suggest you use omni grind in you espresso machines – we try to optimise this for a 4 minute cafetiere and filter coffee machines, so it’s far too course for espresso and will flow much too quickly giving a very weak and insipid shot.

What now?

We know this will cause issues for a few of you, so we have come up with the following to hopefully make things better in the long run:

 

• As mentioned, we will shortly have a pre-ground version of Organic Espresso Landscape on the website. We’ll send you an eshot if you’re on the mailing list once it’s ready along with an introductory offer.
• We do have the fab rhino hand grinders, these are capable of grinding fine enough for espresso.
• We think these hand grinders are so good we are going to give away a handful on our social media over the next few weeks!
• We’re currently testing several new motorised grinders to find the best recommendations and offer the best of these (for sensible money!) on the webshop. Again we’re going to give one away to one of you lucky lot.

We often get asked for advice on making better coffee at home. Without question, grinding your coffee fresh and to the correct setting for the brew method is absolutely the number one thing you can do – especially for espresso. Following the brew guides and making the most of your coffee will definitely mean the next step in you espresso journey.