Crown House Blend Coffee

Crown House Blend was first conceived in 1999 as part of Northern Tea Merchants’ 40th birthday celebrations and was the brainchild of our coffee roaster John Carlile.

The name ‘Crown House’ originates from the name of the building that Northern Tea Merchants Limited occupy. Built around 1890 and occupied from until 1978 by the same company Messrs. Salt and Short, who were a general factors and salt merchants, with the buildings name originally being The Crown Salt Works. When Northern Tea Merchants moved to these premises in 1978 (I was 7 years old) I remember feeling as though I had literally gone back in time. There were old enamel signs, peculiar machines, 1920s and 1930s advertising material for products I had never even heard of and a number of old ledgers which had meticulously completed using a traditional stylus and pot of ink. I still have one of the styluses in my office. So, like Northern Tea Merchants, our building has a very interesting history and has seen many, many changes over the last 125 or so years.

Crown House Blend has a very similar in profile to our very popular Winter Velvet Coffee Blend but there are some essential differences which make the coffees react differently depending on how they are made. Winter Velvet makes a strong cafetiere and a well-rounded espresso whereas the Crown House Blend is more suited for filter and cafetiere.

Crown House consists of coffees from Colombia, Sumatra, Costa Rica and India, all blended post-roasting which gives the delightful appearance of light, medium and dark-roast beans mixed together, which looks very nice, as well as tasting great.

The Colombian coffees in this blend are produced using the ‘fully washed’ method. Coffees produced in this way have a sharp zestiness and clean, crisp flavour. The Sumatran coffee is from our trusted suppliers Sarimakmur and we use a varietal that they excel at growing and producing. The Costa Rican element of this blend is not a ‰’generic‰’ Costa Rican Coffee (SHB ‰- aka strictly hard bean) even though its proportions are fairly small in this blend we use a single estate ‘Dota Tarrazu Coffee’ for its fine character. Finally, the Indian constituent as I am sure you can guess, are from our friends and trusted Allanasons from whom we purchase our hugely popular, Indian Monsooned Malabar Coffee.