Wilkinsons-USA

Wilkinson's of Norwich coffees are now on grocery store shelves! Southern Family Markets (aka Piggly Wiggly) are now carrying our Brewton Brew, Wilkinson's House Blend, and Costa Rica Tarrazu coffees. We are currently stocked in both the Brewton, Alabama and Atmore, Alabama locations, and hope to expand into more as word gets out about our attention to fresh coffees.

Posted via email from Patsy’s posterous

Wilkinson's of Norwich USA is getting some awesome feedback about how great our Pumpkin Spice flavored coffee is!  For all our flavored coffees, we use a chemical free flavoring called PowerGrind which has natural flavors infused into the actual ground coffee in high concentrations. Just a wee bit added to freshly roasted coffee gives it a natural, smooth tasting touch of flavor. Serve your guests a warm and creamy cup of Pumpkin Spice flavored coffee and they'll remember your hospitality long after the turkey has gobbled. Pumpkin Spice coffee is an obvious partner with pie, or perhaps a fresh slice of pumpkin bread, but simply served by itself this all-naturally-flavored Pumpkin Spice coffee will tickle your palate with all the seasonal tastes you expect. Add a dollop of freshly whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon or chocolate…you'll give thanks to your taste buds all season! Supply is limited, so order soon! 

Happy Thanksgiving, and as always, keep it fresh!

Posted via email from Patsy’s posterous

Today I convinced our coffee roaster JohnJuan to let me try my hand at a dark roast all by myself, and short of nearly starting our first roaster fire, I didn't do so bad! I started with 15 pounds of Guatemala Huehuetenango, a SHB (strictly hard bean) known for adapting well to dark roasts. I followed all the rules, charting and profiling the bean probe temperature, monitoring the bean color through the drum's view window, and listening for "first crack" (cool sound). I pulled bean samples every 2 minutes during the roast (note that the photos attached are from my 2nd roast). Unfortunately it seems I kept the roaster flame cranked too high (something about regulating the heat? sheesh!), so those beautiful Guatemala Huehuetenango beans quickly went from green to good to garbage. It's like broiling toast – beautiful, brown, and aromatic one second, charcoal the next!  Well, I smoked up the factory and most of the countryside, and totally stomped on the Maillard Reaction in my first roast (I wound up pouring it on the burn pile – oiliest beans I've ever seen).

But I was determined, and reloaded the Probat with another 15 pounds of green beans. I lowered the starting temp and maintained a slower bake, and pulled a second roast that was not too light, not too dark, but one that was just right. The Guatemala Huehuetenango dark roast stands wonderfully by itself, but since I've been experimenting with developing a different type of dark roast blend I chose a more lightly roasted Central American bean and voila! We now have a Dark Roast Melange which has passed several taste tests from "those who like it dark!" Try it if you dare…come on over to the dark side!

I'm happy with the results…not bad for a first attempt. But I'm thinking in the future, I'll leave the roasting to JohnJuan. I like cupping instead. 

Keep it fresh!

Patsy

www.wilkinsonsusa.com

Posted via email from Patsy’s posterous

Wow, what a good day. My favorite days have always been when we’re roasting the beans, but delivering them the same day to a client is especially fulfilling. “John Juan” rose to an emergency call yesterday (after working elsewhere since 4am!) and roasted up some beautiful batches of Brewton Brew and Blue Mountain Blend for our newest client, a popular bakery in town called BeeSweet Bakery. They had coffee for their clients this morning that was roasted just last night.

The folks at Bee Sweet Bakery truly appreciate specialty coffees and are excited about offering our coffees to their customers. What I (and their customers I’m sure) enjoy is how they actually talk with their customers rather than just handing them a cup of hot java. They truly want to know how you like it, and if you don’t like it they want to know. We are a great match in that respect…feedback, whether positive or negative, can only help you improve.

The only complaint I have with our new bakery partnership is that they’re trying to fatten me up! Every time I go in they hand me a white bag with surprises inside – yesterday it was not one, but three, melt-in-your-mouth Cream Cheese Danish, the day before it was a huge carrot/walnut muffin, and some of the most yummy lemon bars! Crikey! I normally don’t even eat sweets, but like I tell people who say they don’t drink coffee, “Maybe you never had it this fresh!” (BeeSweet is now serving lunch as well, and I must recommend the panini-style sandwiches and a most delightful Sunshine Salad, with cranberries, sunflower seeds, pecans, and a mouth-watering raspberry vinaigrette…a serious taste explosion, in the most welcome way.)

I’d also like to thank our other local merchants who have been carrying our product since the first roasted beans dropped into the Probat cooling tray.

NDI/Cracked Pot is a local reseller of the most beautiful floral reproductions you’ll ever lay eyes on. (NDI stands for Natural Decorations Inc.) The factory is located here in Brewton, and provides elegant arrangements that you must touch to realize they are not real (even that is a guess!) . They provide their arrangements for some of the most well-known showrooms in the country, and of course the finest homes. The Cracked Pot is Brewton’s own local outlet for purchasing NDI’s unique and classic reproductions. www.ndi.com Stop by their shop and let Jan and Joan show you around, and be sure to have a look at their photo gallery to see what’s driving the bees crazy!

The Hourglass Antique shop is a treasure well worth searching for, also located downtown Brewton. Situated in a building that is an antique in it’s own right (the old Luttrell Hardware Store), the shop still has an old freight elevator that is now loaded with oriental rugs, and two jam-packed floors that hold true nuggets of home-furnishing history (in addition to WoN coffees, and other local offerings such as hushpuppy mix!). I’ve got my eye on a bedroom suite upstairs, and an antique shoe-polishing kit. They also have a huge variety of gift items, like porcelain place settings, leather-bound diaries, and my favorite aroma beads (I especially like the mango/ginger variety). The Hourglass is currently working on their website, and when I have a link I will certainly provide it. A treasure map of sorts!

And the kudos portion of my blog entry today wouldn’t be complete without including the local Brewton Area Chamber of Commerce www.brewtonchamber.com. They have been hugely instrumental in getting the word out to chamber members about our company, and have procured our coffees for a “Coffee with the Candidates” political forum next week. They display our fliers prominently in their beautiful chamber offices where many visitors (and now WoN customers) have learned of our presence.
Brewton has been Berry good to us (we are the home of the Blueberry Festival ya know?). We look forward to adding to our merchant listing, as well as our home-use customers. Come grow with us, because as you should know by now, it doesn’t get much fresher than this!

A funny thing happened on the way home from the factory today. My first “poppage.” Just how fresh is “too fresh?” Have you ever heard of the guy who thought he’d been shot in the back of the head, only to discover that a tin of biscuit dough he’d just purchased at the grocers had exploded in the back seat of his car and plastered itself to his scalp? (He reached back to touch his head and thought his brains were falling out!) Well, very similar experience, only I was showered with coffee grounds! Though my brains weren’t falling out, I certainly put them to task trying to figure out what the heck had just happened.

I recently had what I thought was a stroke of genius, and had cut down some larger bags to accommodate sample size pouches for potential customers (until the sample pouches I had on order arrived). I didn’t bother with using the valved bags, as coffee grounds aren’t supposed* to de-gas as much as the beans, though they do continue to de-gas (I often remind our coffee customers that, unlike other food products such as biscuit dough, if it’s bulging, it’s simply an indicator of freshness). But it appears that perhaps we were bagging coffee that is “too fresh?” Oh my God! Is there such a thing? Apparently so.

The little 2oz pouches had swollen up to resemble those little souvenir footballs that cheerleaders toss to the crowds at football games. I had brought a couple home with me and planned to use a tiny sharp object to puncture the bag and release the gases. Rupert had told me he’d never seen one explode, though he had seen many that looked on the verge. Well, please advise our Master Roaster that I have one up on him! The best part of this experience is that my car, though riddled with coffee grounds, smells better than any coffee shop I’ve ever visited, due to the lingering aroma of freshly roasted Columbian Supremo remnants that will likely continue showing up for months to come.

Our motto is “It doesn’t get much fresher than this!” Well folks, I’m here to tell ya, our roasted coffee is fresh. Wanna vacuum my car? I’ll send you a free sample, complete with safety pin.