Reuse...
For International coffee day we have teamed up the Urban Vintage Affair to discuss the use of vintage item in the coffee world. It's my (Su’s) passion that we re-use items that have an interesting story behind them.
You can find our friends here https://theurbanvintageaffair.com/ and they focus on the reuse of antiques for every day use - it's well worth a look and the coffee spoons are particularly immense!
'Recycle' and 'Reuse' are two words we use a lot here at Dog and Hat - as a business we are careful to pack using recyclable materials, make sure we use everything in moderation, only buy what we need and are dedicated to the reuse of items where we can.
I LOVE a good antiques shop, retro store or charity shop and our coffee cup collection is made up of an eclectic set choices from many locations as we want to drive our re-use in our coffee world. It is easy to be told you need specific items to make good coffee, but coffee is more about mathematics so really your measurements are the area to be specific with.
To support our reuse story, I have selected a number of items from our office that have had a storied life previously.
#1 Our Cocoa Shaker!
Here is a beautiful cocoa shaker that we use for dusting our milky drinks with chocolate power and everyone loves it. We bought it for a very reasonable £20 from a antique shop as a Father's Day gift for Dave and its engraved.. though you will have to pop in to read what it says.
#2 Cupping Spoon Collection
Cupping spoons are used for tasting coffee and for competition they must have a specific depth to the bowl - however, we have three types here.
Some deep soup spoons that my mum's had since I was a child (they have a cute flower pattern on the stem), some silver soup spoons from an antique shop in Malton and lastly we have some Speciality Coffee Association (SCA) approved spoons (which are engraved with our logo).
#3 Knives
We open a lot of boxes - I mean A LOT - and you know what? your knife doesn't need to be as sharp as specific box cutters you find on the market. These Sabatier knives were bought at a community table top sale and are blunter than I can be :-) Perfect for a quick box open. Though, as Sabatier started in 1969 we are unsure of their age.
#4 My Darkroom Timer
I'm a sucker for a Smiths clock and this is a vintage Smiths darkroom timer. It's my first choice for a filter brew time even though our coffee machine has a built-in timer (we also have a digital counter and Dave sometimes uses his iphone too). However, I long ago learnt not to put my phone near water and this is a pleasure to use with its simple wind-up mechanism.
There are so many great things about reusing where you can, and we would love to hear your stories so drop me a line with your favourite reuse items.
Su
