On a road trip up to Northumbria in January we happened to stumble across Pilgrims coffee on Holy Island. Having been very close to just settling for a greasy spoon on the Saturday morning I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a sign for ‘Coffee roastery this way”.

A wonderful space that has the roastery nestled at the bottom of the garden in a shipping container. The charming cafe was a great place to sit and sip through the days batch brew.

Obviously I couldn’t leave without buying a bag of their coffee. The single-origin that they are roasting at the moment is Kamwangi from Kenya, a favourite origin of mine.

The initial smell of the coffee had the expected fruitiness of a Kenyan coffee. On grinding the coffee, however, the fragrance of the strawberry quality streets hit me ( I’m not sure if it was because I ate a disgusting amount of these over Christmas, but the strawberry chocolate aroma was definitely there).

The coffee is bright and acidic, again very typical of the origin, the first few sips possess wonderful citric notes that usually come through as the coffee has cooled. The sweetness balances out the acidity that evolves into a green apple taste that sits around for a while giving the coffee the depth that some African’s sometimes lack. 

Once cooled another level to the coffee appears, ginger and aromatic spices present themselves. 

A beautifully complex coffee that was consumed much quicker than a normal bag.

It worked really well as a pour-over. I didn’t experiment with anything other than V60 and Aeropress with this one, but it does have the depth to produce a tasty espresso.