North Tea Power: My Favorite Cafe

Manchester.... a coffee desert or is it?

It’s well over a year since I developed a passion for coffee. The seed was planted by my old mucka Amy, who is now back in her native New Zealand. I’ve always enjoyed a good cup of coffee and fancied a machine; initially I was going to go for a Rancilio Silvia but Ames convinced me to go for a La Pavoni.  I curse her some mornings as it’s probably one of the toughest machines out there to achieve consistency with. Still, it looks amazing, with real care and attention I can get decent results as long as I buy good beans. Some may say it's not a machine for the beginner but hard lessons are usually the best. Who ever learnt about coffee using a bean-to-cup after all? 

An espresso from my La Pavoni

One of my initial problems was that I didn’t really understand what exceptional coffee tasted like and I didn’t know of anywhere in Manchester to find out. Luckily I’m up in Edinburgh quite a bit and had heard that Wellington Coffee in George Street was good! Wow....my first visit was amazing; they use Square Mile Beans and the guy that pulled my shot was supposedly a top barista. I didn't take notes at the time but remember a fruity sweet explosion of taste and me being excited for ages afterwards. The experience was similar to the time the Dutch cheesemonger in  Canterbury unwrapped his gouda  from a linen cloth with real pride to give me a taste of the most wonderful sweet, slightly acidic cheese I've ever tasted.... anyway I digress

Then I went to Artisan and tasted and found that their coffee was quite different, richer darker roast, Andronicus in Harrods where the barista was rubbish but the beans exceptional, Monmouth was OK but you can't judge quality with one cup.... but nothing in Manchester!! Well that was until I saw the North Tea Power sign. Call me a fool, but I wouldn't normally link a cafe with tea in its name with great coffee. 

Yeah but there is an oasis!

My first visit to NTP back in August was cool. Simply, I got a warm welcome and the coffee was miles better than anything I’ve had in Manchester before. From memory I think they were using Has Bean Jailbreak which was pretty good. Since then I’ve gone about once a week and really enjoy my visit. It’s run by Wayne and Jane who are cool and they’ve got pretty good staff too.... in fact big Al did the best V60 I’ve tasted.

The staff

 Wayne makes the place for me as he always has a chat and he’s so passionate about the quality of his coffee. A few months ago he was going through the process of getting Steve at Has Bean to do an NTP blend and it was great to be asked what I thought. I loved the 1^st blend iteration which was light fruity and slightly acidic but maybe not the best choice for the general coffee drinking population of Manchester. The current NTP blend is really good but I’d need to confirm what was in it. 

An NTP espresso

In my line of work, I’ve come across my fair share of high achievers and one common theme with them is that they all have OCD to a lesser or greater degree. It’s almost a prerequisite to achieve exceptional results in most fields and I think Wayne’s attention to detail could get him up there.  One day my espresso was far from perfect, I even tried another one just to make sure......something was wrong! I said to Wayne that something was up....he looked sad. The following week he confirmed that he thought so too and had gone through everything and only after stripping down the Mazzer had he found the problem. Back to having really good espresso.

Wayne

The next step

Since getting into my coffee, espresso has always been my tipple of choice. That was until Steve Leighton from Has Bean came to NTP to do a talk and tasting. He was serving 3 ways the El Salvador Finca Argentina beans grown by Alejandro Martinez in the Apaneca-Ilamatepec Mountain range.

Steve Leighton

Steve is my kinda guy. He really cares and is passionate about his product and the growers that he trades with. Quality is everything and he travels round the world to get the best. His hands gesticulating to extenuate points, especially when describing different flavours or tastes.... (some people say I do the same....yeah yeah) I think Steve should replace the Olly the wine buff on Saturday Kitchen. Coffee is much less pretentious than wine and far cheaper. Yeah, popping a cork is easy, but the path of least resistance rarely results in the most pleasure....good coffee is like that.

So time to talk about coffee, all from the same Finca Argentina bourbon bean but processed differently to produce quite different tastes:

1.  The washed bean, filtered by the Has Bean's roaster. This was a nice coffee...I got a real liquorice taste, with a maple syrup sweetness and a tad of acidity on the tip of the tongue. It was really good but lacked a slight amount of body.....it was refreshing though and may even be nice when iced.

2.    The pulped natural bean which was most people's favourite. It had a more treacly feel in the mouth, it was very sweet, just a hint of acidity/citrus orange. I often struggle with pour over or filter coffee because it can lack body when compared with espresso but the pulped natural was different... it was deep, rich and a few described as earthy. Steve mentioned "strawberries covered in dung but in a nice way". This was exceptional coffee!

3.       The natural somehow excited me more than the 1st two. It was very acidic/metallic and had a slight feel of alcohol to it. I described it as tasting like a 90% chocolate and it really got my mouth reacting in the same way as when I had an IPA beer from the USA earlier in the evening. Yeah coffee number two was probably better but this one seemed to provoke more of an emotional response from me.

We then tasted a cascara which is a fruity infusion made from the normally discarded part of the coffee plant...Steve warned us that it had a particularly high caffeine content, which I'm fealt 3 hours later... poor night of sleep for me. I think I liked it but maybe it's place isn't during a coffee bean tasting. Still, I'd happily pay a few quid for a bag.

A cascara brewing

Why is this the next step you may ask! Well, this evening at NTP opened my eyes to not only drinking espresso. I’m getting well into V60 now. It’s a far more subtle way to make coffee but in most instances it also opens up far more taste sensations. My last blog or my blip here says more.

A Final Word

The start of a V60

I would love my own cafe. I’ve learnt loads on what it takes to have a really good cafe from NTP....love of the product, attention to detail and putting the customer first. If ever you’re in Manchester, this should be your 1st port of call.


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Nice coffee machines here!