With micro-roasteries and speciality shops fighting back the tide of commercial chain domination, Elise Rana Hopper discovers what makes ‘third wave coffee’ not just another cup
Coffee culture has been embraced by the mainstream for so long even your grandma knows her cappuccino from her macchiato but, for true coffee devotees, something far more interesting is brewing underground – quite literally.
In a basement in central Newcastle, where the high-brow, low-volume conversation and incense drifting from the ethnic emporium upstairs add to the Amsterdam vibe, a cool, arty 20-something orders her ‘usual’. Without fanfare, she is served a ball of ice in a small cup, a chilled apothecary bottle containing coffee brewed overnight for six hours by the man behind the counter and a tiny glass shaker of tonic water, which he also makes himself. It’s a far cry from the squashy sofas, grande lattes and faceless ubiquity of the high street chains.
“Yeah, you don’t really stumble across this place,” says Joe Meagher, the banker-turned-competition barista whose Flat Caps Coffee is at the vanguard of Newcastle’s burgeoning speciality coffee scene, and whose signature cold brew was ranked among the best in the country at the UK Barista Championships. “The majority of people come here for the coffee, to try something different.”
Welcome to coffee’s ‘third wave’.
Stuart Lee Archer, of local coffee company Pumphreys, says that 10 years ago it was almost impossible to find good coffee unless, he says, you bought it and made it yourself. Now, all you need to know is where to find it. Originally founded in Newcastle’s Flesh Market in 1750, Pumphreys has seen fashions come and go, from the instant coffee doldrums of the 1970s and ‘80s, to the pre-ground sachets that made up 90% of Pumphreys’ sales a decade ago, to the single origin beans and espresso machines that are now the bulk of their business. It’s a revolution sparked, says Archer, by a single coffee shop.
“Flat White in Berwick Street, Soho – that was when coffee culture in this country started to morph,” he says. This institution, opened by ex-pat New Zealanders in 2005 and named after the flagship drink of the Antipodean coffee shops it sought to emulate, inspired Archer to bring something similar to his family business. “There were people from all over the country going on pilgrimages to this little cafe, then going home thinking – why can’t I do this here?
“I did loads of research and basically learned how to teach people to make good coffee at the same time as learning it myself. Then we built a dedicated space and started doing proper training courses.”
These would sow the seeds of the first wave of indie coffee in Newcastle, with ‘Flat Cap Joe’ Meagher among the alumni.
“I was just going to open a sandwich shop – I thought coffee was coffee, but I wanted to use local producers so I went to Pumphreys. Stuart made me a Kenya AA filter coffee that blew me away – it was better than anything I’d ever tasted and nowhere in Newcastle was serving anything like it, so I said right, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Meanwhile, Anth Atkinson, a former sales exec for Glasgow roaster Matthew Algie, set up Pink Lane Coffee in 2012 and launched the Colour Coffee roastery a year later.
“The more I learned about coffee, the more involved I wanted to be – my home equipment went from being a cafetiere to aeropress to a commercial single-brew machine,” he says when we meet at The Journey, a joint venture with Sustrans and Recyke Y’Bike that seems a logical match given the bikes ‘n’ beards profile of many a hipster coffee connoisseur.
I join him for a ‘cupping’ of a fresh haul of artisan roasts from Berlin, which involves all the supping, slurping, and ceremony of a serious wine tasting.
Coffee has more aromatic and flavour compounds than wine, I learn, and the complexity is part of the appeal.
“Most people’s understanding of coffee is that it’s something that’s dark and bitter, or tastes like Nescafe,” says Anth. “But it can taste like blueberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants. We have a different approach to coffee – we want to showcase what it can be.”
The North East’s speciality coffee scene may be small, but there’s more evidence of the ‘third wave’ revolution if you know where to look. In Jesmond there’s Cafe 1901 and Ouseburn Coffee Company’s new Harvest Canteen.
Coffee writer Alison Bell of Black Coffee and Other Stories has opened BLK on Heaton’s Chillingham Road, and Newcastle’s tech community of Campus North are eagerly awaiting the opening of Bunker Coffee in Carliol Square.
Holy Island’s Pilgrims Coffee is now roasting in its garden shed, while Mocha Mondo is at work in a pod at Amble Harbour Village.
Coola Boola and Lola’s Coffee provide coffee directly to bleary-eyed and caffeine-hungry commuters in need. Blaydon-based Coffee Latino has worldwide demand for its bespoke mobile coffee vehicles while its Gold Box Roastery beans are taking London by storm (get yours from Fenwick). Then there are the secret stashes (just ask Mark at the Cycle Hub).
How to tell you’re in serious coffee territory? Branding and social media-savvy, if the graphic design doesn’t give it away then what’s chalked on the menu will – look for a couple of brew methods and a carefully curated selection of small-batch artisan roasts, with flavour notes and extra marks for traceability and seasonality. And the person behind the counter should really know what they’re doing.
If it sounds a little intimidating – it certainly can be. But once you taste the difference there may be no going back – and before you know it, you too may find yourself obsessing over water filtration methods, over-extraction and the importance of terroir.
“Everyone’s on a journey, and it’s a big subject,” Stuart Archer concedes. “And there are loads of ways to get it wrong. But that’s the fun – that’s why people like coffee. I like striving for that point of perfection but I don’t think I ever want to get there. It’s like chasing rainbows.”
