London is always on the move and so it its facinating coffee scene. When I first went to the British capital for the London Coffee Festival a few years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to discover some of the city’s most outstanding coffee roasteries, and meet the people who do their utmost to roast lots of delicious beans to perfection.
One of the places that I loved the most was the former Nude roastery, hidden behind a car park just off Brick Lane. It had a real charm to it, but it also offered very limited growth potential, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that the operation was soon moved to a state-of-the-art facility on Hanbury Street, not far from the original roastery.
Richard Reed, co-founder of Nude explained to me over a cuppa Joe: “We’re very proud to have this amazing piece of equipment [a 35kg Loring coffee roaster] here. It’s like upgrading from a very good car to an amazing car.”
During my visit in 2015, when the new facility had just been opened, I was also lucky enough to witness a demo roast, partially hosted by Loring themselves, where a small batch of 6kg of coffee was roasted to show that this ultramodern piece of equipment can be used for any kind of need without any significant energy loss.
The interesting thing of course is that Nude’s roastery is now located exactly opposite their flagship café, and it can therefore absorb any overflow, particularly in the weekends. The large open space invites people to be inquisitive about the operations at the back and according to Richard: “Being this open also really helps with selling beans. People actually show much more of an interest when they can see how things are done.”
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With table service, excellent food and great coffee to be had cross the road, the roastery is more of a retail, showroom and quick consumption space. There is no wifi here for example, but they do serve alcohol so coming here for a quick after work drink is totally possible.
For what it’s worth, this roastery is testimony to Nude’s unwavering commitment to being a fixture on the London coffee scene and finding ways to roast wonderful coffees in the most environment friendly way possible.
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Did you try a coffee there? I recently started at a place that serves nude coffee and find it runs sour. Perhaps I’ll have to visit their shop and see if our machine is not set up right for it.