The Old Mouse House Cheese Shop & Coffee Bar is a weird set up, cheese and coffee.
If walk in, not obvious a coffee shop, as through the back, though a glimpse of their espresso machine from the cheese shop provides a hint of more beyond.
It took several visits over Christmas and New Year to find the coffee shop open, cheese shop not always open or closed early.
According to their own facebook page, coffee shop in the cellar they say downstairs, it is not it is a tiny room out the back, climb two steps. Cosy would be the word.
Also a little room upstairs reached by narrow steep stairs. No handrail.
It is also necessary to climb the steep narrow stairs to reach the toilets. Not accessible to those with physical disabilities or the frail and elderly.
The coffee Stokes, the tea tea pigs.
A bakery cum tea shop opposite Coffee Aroma in the town centre, Stokes coffee, tea pigs tea, lasted all of nine months. Clearly no lessons learnt.
It could though be worse, tea and coffee supplied by Lincoln Tea and Coffee.
A row of syrups on a back shelf. A sure sign of bad coffee.
One cappuccino ordered. Cup size too large the larger size.
Having explored upstairs, I found my cappuccino awaiting me on a table when I returned downstairs.
WTF, this a CAPPUCCINO. Dribbling down the side, spilt in the saucer.
What I assumed to be a chocolate melting in the saucer.
The coffee looked disgusting, chocolate sprinkled on top.
Not only looked disgusting, tasted disgusting, served scalding hot, undrinkable.
I took one sip and left untouched.
I asked of the cheese counter the cheese.
Dunno, replied the girl behind the cheese counter, ask her out back.
Her out back, who made the coffee, daughter of the cheesemaker, cannot tell you how we make our cheese, it is a secret, if we told you everyone would copy us.
This is the same bullshit I am fed in coffee shops serving bad coffee, cannot tell you who supplies the coffee as other coffee shops would copy us.
I politely tell them of transparency, direct trade, traceability through roasterie back to the farm.
I had visions of cows eating seaweed or the marram grass in Skegness.
They buy in the milk, pay a fair price, or so claimed.
The cheese Lymn Bank Cheese, the finest Skeggie adulterated fake cheddar 17 different flavours, including ginger, all identical size wrapped in plastic. Some of the cheese encased in wax.
The odds are stacked against any new business. 80% fail in the first 18 months.
Five years ago may have got away with opening a coffee shop serving bad coffee. Not today. You have two weeks to prove yourself. People will check you out. If they like your coffee they will return, bring their friends, if not, they will tell their friends not to bother.
A coffee shop has to have a quality espresso machine, quality grinder, skilled barista, buy quality coffee, coffee ground fresh for each shot, precise measurements, weigh the coffee, extraction time, temperature. And with repeat consistency from one cup to the next.
For bad coffee we have the chains. Every cafe in Lincoln serves badly made Stokes low quality catering supply cheap commodity coffee. Why join the list? And if wished to try Stokes they would visit Stokes.
Nor is there any excuse for using poor quality tea pigs. Even less excuse when on Steep Hill have Imperial Teas.
But a quality coffee roastery or tea merchant would need to be convinced you have the expertise else they get a bad name.
No outside seating. Essential these days for a coffee shop to have outside seating.
In Lincoln there are three excellent coffee shops, Coffee Aroma, Madame Waffle, Base Camp. In the spring 200 Degrees will open, coffee mediocre at best, but better than the corporate chains.
Low quality cheese can buy in a supermaket.
A cheese shop has to have quality cheese, rare breed cows out on pasture not the black and white bulk milk producers, unpasteurised milk.
Heed the advice of Bronwen Percival on buying cheese in the Appendix to Reinventing the Wheel.
Buy unadulterated cheese … if a cheesemaker hides behind added ingredients, whether smoke, added fruits or spices … it is either a tragedy … or a sign their milk was devoid of character in the first place … Buy raw-milk cheese … Buy complex cheese … Buy from a cheesemonger … good cheesemongers are curators of good cheese.
Adulterating cheese is akin to adding syrups to coffee. Don’t. It either ruins a good coffee or is used to hide bad coffee.
Their use of social media to say the least perverse. A badly filmed video of their coffee shop located out the back. A picture of a dog tied up outside in the cold and wet (since deleted). Questions posted on their cheese and coffee, not only lack the courtesy to answer, the questions are deleted.
And no, not the Rolls-Royce of coffee machines.
Footfall on Steep Hill has in recent years dramatically fallen. The only way to attract business, to offer quality, word of mouth.
Who are the demographics? The tourist are nigh non-existent, and visitors from Europe are accustomed to quality cheese. Are German visitors going to wish to buy a waxed cheesed stamped with a Lancaster WWII bomber that may have atomised their grandparents?
For quality cheese in Lincoln, The Cheese Society, top of the High Street, bottom of The Strait. Or if in Bailgate next to the Post Office try Redhill Farm Shop which has a small selection of quality local cheeses. There is also local cheese on the monthly farmers market in Castle Square.
Earlier I had excellent lunch at The Cheese Society. Walking up The Strait and Steep Hill, passing many closed business, it was going from the sublime to the ridiculous.
On my back down I passed by The Cheese Society, still packed.
I passed Madame Waffle, it too was packed.
I later returned to Madame Waffle and had a cappuccino. A pleasure, as is always a well made coffee. The difference a skilled barista and quality coffee makes.
Quality, service, word-of-mouth, counts.
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