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 the elevenses story 

 

Synopsis...

The idea of elevenses came about when a coffee growing friend on the South Atlantic island of St Helena, saw sales drastically drop because coffee buying tourist numbers plummeted due to Covid travel restrictions. So I asked if he’d be willing to export his coffee, and to name the price; thankfully he agreed, and at a very reasonable rate. I then purchased a small ‘state of the art’ coffee roasting machine, and thus elevenses was born in late winter/early spring 2021.
The initial intention was to sell St Helena coffee alongside a very small number of select speciality coffees, but when I found a supplier with a wide range of ethical and interesting green (unroasted) coffee beans, the number of coffees on the elevenses website grew to what it is today.

For a more detailed in-depth story of how I eventually arrived at elevenses, read on…​
 

In Chronological Order...​

Hampshire:

My first awareness of coffee was as a young child, breathing-in the delicious aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans that wafted down the street, just past the Tudor Buildings in Southampton’s city centre. The Coffee House used a rotating drum roaster that was strategically placed in the shop’s front window, with an exhaust outlet deliberately sticking out into the street, to tempt shoppers to come inside and make a purchase.

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Somerset:

I had my first taste of coffee somewhere around the age of twenty-five, while living on the Quantock Hills in Somerset… at least I have no recollection of trying or being impressed by coffee before this.

I was given a french press and cheap coffee grinder as birthday presents, and so my quest for tasty coffee began. Fortunately I found two shops in nearby Taunton that sold coffees from a wide range of coffee growing regions, and after trying these, I decided my favourites were the ones with flavour notes of chocolate and nuts. My appreciation of coffees with fruity notes didn't come about until I moved to London and started to taste some extraordinary and unusual coffees.

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London & Seattle:

London is where my coffee education really began!

While attending a degree course in Music & Audio Technology at Thames Valley University (as it was then known), I lived above a coffee shop called Munsons, in South Ealing. In February of my first year at uni, by which time I had become a regular customer at Munsons, they advertised for a barista. So I applied, got the job, and ended up working there for a few years while attending university, and beyond.

Munsons taught me everything coffee, particularly espresso in the style of the great Seattle coffee guru, David Schomer.

 

I then went on to work as head barista at a friend’s award winning tea room, Orange Pekoe in Barnes. While being primarily a tea room, selling close to one hundred different teas & infusions, it also sold twelve different speciality coffees brewed as pour-over, as well as espresso based drinks.

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In 2011 I took a sabbatical to travel abroad and meet David Schomer at his coffee shop, Espresso Vivace, in Seattle… and also visit Roslyn, the main filming location of the excellent 1990’s television series, Northern Exposure. Although Italy is rightly credited as being the birthplace of latte art, it was relatively unknown to the wider coffee world until David Schomer (& his team of baristas) developed & popularised it in the 1980s. When I met David, he was experimenting with a new and revolutionary design of steam wand tip, known as the Sproline Foam Knife. He was like a kid with a new toy, and was amazed at how a tip of this design which in theory shouldn’t work, was in fact turning out the best micro-bubble milk texture he’d ever produced. He kept feeding me caffe lattes with incredible latte art designs… I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to a genius at work, and caffeine poisoning!

 

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West Yorkshire & St Helena:

Seven years after the Seattle sabbatical, I was fortunate to be able to afford the time and expense to undertake a second coffee pilgrimage, this time to the remote South Atlantic Island of St Helena. This British Overseas Territory is home to several coffee estates, which grow the rare coffee varietal, St Helena Green Tipped Bourbon.

With the help of a Saint (the island name for St Helenians) and several emails, I was able to gain permission to help with the coffee harvest on all the island’s coffee estates. The Saint in question was a friend I met at horticultural college in Somerset in 1986; he invited me to visit the island a couple of years after leaving college, but it took another thirty before I finally made it to St Helena! Amazingly, he was able to arrange for me to help with the harvest at Brian Beard’s Beardsville estate, which was a bit of a coup seeing as Brian’s a bit of a loner, and apparently had never before let anyone help with his coffee. Unlike a couple of the other estates, Brian doesn’t doesn’t export his coffee, he sells it only to a gift shop in the island’s capital, Jamestown. So when Covid struck a couple of years later, and it drastically affected the tourist numbers visiting the island, his sales plummeted.

This is when I asked if he would consider exporting his coffee to me… when he said yes, the idea of elevenses coffee roasters was born. In April 2021, elevenses became an official one-man cottage industry, with the first consignment of St Helena beans arriving the same month… and by June I had purchased my first roaster.

 

Several years on, elevenses supply a couple of organic wholefood shops in West Yorkshire, and a coffee shop in Kew. The range of coffees offered online has grown to a choice that usually hovers around the eleven mark, with several of them having a provenance you don’t come across that often. For example, Burundi, India, Malawi, Timor-Leste, West Java, and the rare St Helena Green Tipped Bourbon.

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I would like to thank the following, all of whom have helped and inspired me in the world of coffee.

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In chronological order…

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• The Coffee House ~ Southampton, Hampshire.

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• County Stores, and the shop whose name I can’t remember, that sold coffee in Bath Place ~ Taunton, Somerset.

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• Whoever the person was who gave me a French press and coffee grinder as birthday presents ~ Quantock Hills, Somerset.

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• Pan, Panos & Achilleas ~ Munsons, South Ealing, London.

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• Marianna ~ Orange Pekoe, Barnes, London.

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• David Schomer ~ Espresso Vivace, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

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• Richard & Monica Constantine, Brian Beard, Rosemary Gate Estate, Solomon & Company (Bamboo Hedge & Wrangham’s Estates), and Farm Lodge Country House Hotel who grow & supply coffee to St Helena distillery, with which to make Midnight Mist coffee liqueur) ~ St Helena, South Atlantic Ocean.

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• My wife Sophie who has contributed immensely, from the initial elevenses concept, to what it is today.

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• Ikawa & Aillio for the excellent coffee roasting machines ~ London, England & Denmark, respectively.

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• Green Coffee Collective & Omwani for superb high quality green (unroasted) coffee beans ~ York, North Yorkshire.

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• Valley Organics-Hebden Bridge, Hedgehog Organics-Bingley, and Sift Bakes & Brews-Kew, for stocking elevenses coffee.