Dog and Hat Blog

As a whole-bean only subscription service, one of the questions we get asked most is what grinder to buy.

Now, this can often open a can of worms as everyone has their own preferences and budgets… then chosen brew method will also impact your choice.

In this blog we’d like to shine a spotlight on our sustainability, environmental impact and carbon footprint policies.

As a mail order coffee subscription company here in the UK, we realise that we must always carefully monitor our climate footprint.  We have speciality green coffee shipped from origin thousands of miles away to storage warehouses in Europe,  From there the greens travel to our partner roasters (both here in the UK and further afield).  The roasted coffee then makes it to us and then finally to your doorstep to enjoy.

As such, we put environmental and sustainability at the centre of everything we do and there’s a couple of fairly new initiatives to get you up to speed with.

We hope everyone is enjoying a little more freedom to go about their daily lives these days.

Click the link to see the July Dialled In subscription coffee in more detail.

For the last few months we've been working behind the scenes on something pretty exciting and we're very pleased to introduce you to our first transatlantic roaster - Rabbit Hole Roasters from Montreal in Quebec, Canada.

The rest of the coffee lineup this month has a distinctly Yorkshire flavour to it with our local North Yorkshire roaster Roost Coffee joining returning favourites North Star and Casa Espresso from the west of the county.

Click the link to see the June Dialled In subscription coffee in more detail.

Firstly we hope everyone is still staying safe and well during these strange times.

Since we started Dog and Hat back in 2017 some months have just been plain sailing - they run smoothly and we don't hit any challenges... then there are some that definitely don't follow this pattern.

The coffee we've chosen this month is designed to reflect those more challenging months and return, in some small way, the kindness we've received and continue to receive from the awesome folk in the coffee and hospitality industry.

Click the link to see the May Dialled In coffee in more detail.

Well, these are crazy times we live in, but we are going to continue with our plans as best as possible.

This month we take a return trip to Amsterdam to include one of the most exciting speciality coffee roasters in Europe in the subscription - Friedhats.

Joining Friedhats will be one of the UKs most popular and consistently excellent roasters - Dave at Crankhouse Coffee down in Exeter along with Zach Chipp at Chipp coffee in Leeds (and Edinburgh) and finally we have Limini Coffee from West Yorkshire.

Click the link to see the April Dialled In coffee in more detail.

This month see us return to the continent to bring you one of the most exciting coffee roasters in Amsterdam - Rum Baba - then to complete the lineup we have three returning favourites joining them.

First up are one of the most requested roasters that we partner with - the amazing Matt and Anabelle down at Hundred House in Shropshire.

Alongside them is Ste at Django over in Southport, Merseyside.  Ste has been with us since our very first subscription back in 2017, so it's always a joy to get he chance to work with him again.

Finally, returning for this month we have the most requested coffee in the history of Dog and Hat - Lee at Foundry and his now legendary Ethiopia Rocko Mountain

Each month, we go through an extremely rigorous coffee selection process culminating in each selected coffee being profiled on our standard equipment under lab conditions.  We do this for both filter and espresso coffees.

The reason we do this is simple.  I’m sure we’ve all experienced that frustration of getting an exciting new bag of coffee that we just can’t wait to get stuck into… and then we end up spending the first 3 or 4 coffees working out how to get the best out of it.

To help alleviate this most frustrating part of the coffee experience, we have standardised our testing approach to provide you with a better frame of reference to allow you to start you dialling in process from more educated position… hopefully reducing the number of wasted dialling in attempts and ‘sink-shots’.

Click the link to see the March Dialled In coffee in more detail.

Once again we have two new roasters joining us here at Dog and Hat alongside two old favourites.

The first new roaster is The Missing Bean who have been roasting away in Oxford since 2014 and joining them is a new local roaster from Leeds - the cycling loving Echelon.

Making a welcome return to the subs are Quarter Horse in Birmingham (after a fortuitous meeting between Nathan and Dave at the coffee shop) along with Dan and Francis at Moonroast down in the New Forest.

Welcome to the latest selection of Dialled In coffee for you to enjoy over the festive period.

Once again, our festive selection has a distinctly Yorkshire feel to it as we look forward to our annual trip around the local roasteries to wish them a merry Christmas and pick up the coffee.

We have two new roasters joining us this month - Dark Woods and Bean Brothers both from the Huddersfield area in West Yorkshire - who are joining returning favourites North Star in Leeds and Heart and Graft in Manchester.

Click the link to see the Dialled In December Coffee in more detail.

Some month's go by and you get some fairly easy to understand tasting notes - Chocolate, Cherry, Red Berries, Caramel, maybe even Blueberry.  This month is not one of those months - so be prepared to open you taste buds to some new and exciting flavours including Rhubarb and Persimmon.

This month we welcome back some firm Dog and Hat member favourites - Craft House Coffee and Horsham Coffee Roasters, both from sunny Sussex alongside Manumit from Cardiff.

Then, making their first appearance in the subs we have Caravan Coffee Roasters from London.