Coffee and tea accessories

Coffee and tea accessories

Keep your coffee machine happy

There is little better than starting and ending the day with a fresh cup of coffee: the smell of ground beans drifting through the house in the morning, or a home-made cappuccino on the sofa in the evening. Coffee matters to most of us, so it is worth setting aside a little time every so often to clean the machine that makes it. A larger or more elaborate machine in particular needs some attention now and then to keep working properly.

Tap water is perfectly good to drink, but it carries dissolved minerals, and those minerals cause trouble inside a coffee machine. Over time they build up as limescale in the parts that do the work: the heating element, the pipes and the filters. The machine then needs more energy to come up to temperature, and the pipes and filters are far more likely to clog. That is why it pays to descale roughly every two months. A descaler is easy enough to add to your order, and it comes either as a liquid or in tablet form; both do the job. The scale dissolves, and once you have rinsed the machine through, nothing is left behind.

You will often hear vinegar recommended as a cleaner. For some filter coffee machines it is a reasonable alternative, but on other machines it can cause damage, so check what the manufacturer says before you reach for it. And scale is only half the story: a machine also gets dirty from coffee residue and coffee oils, and for that you need a cleaning agent rather than a descaler. Once a month is usually enough to keep it fresh. It takes very little effort to add a descaler and a cleaner to an order, and the reward is a machine that keeps your coffee tasting the way it should and lasts considerably longer. If you want to do the job properly, give the outside a wipe as well: on most machines the removable parts come off for cleaning, and a soft cloth brings the housing back up nicely. You will find the full range under maintenance and cleaning, with the descalers, the cleaning tablets and the water filters that slow the scale down in the first place.

Make tea a proper moment

Perhaps you are not much of a coffee drinker, or perhaps the afternoon simply calls for tea. There is something companionable about a pot on the table, cups beside it and time to talk. It is worth giving that cup a little thought. There are handsome teapots that keep the tea warm long after it is brewed, and double-walled glasses that hold the heat without burning your fingers, which is no small thing on a cold winter afternoon. If you drink by the glass with a tea bag rather than from a pot, a small dish to rest the used bag on saves the tablecloth. Pots, glasses, strainers and infusers are all in tea equipment, next to our loose tea and tea bags.

Milk, sugar and what goes in the cup

Half of what makes a cappuccino is not the coffee. Milk that foams properly, a sugar stick that does not need a spoon, a cocoa mix for the top, a stirrer that does not go soft: these are the things you notice only when they run out. Our milk and sugar range covers whole milk by the case, plant-based barista drinks for foaming, sugar sticks in white and brown, milk topping and cocoa. For an office, a party or a busy weekend, the disposables hold the cups, lids and wooden stirrers by the box. And if you want something to serve alongside the coffee, look at the delicacies.

Brewing by hand

If you make coffee without a machine, the accessory is the machine. A hand dripper, a paper filter and a kettle you can pour slowly with will take you a long way; add a thermometer and a scale and you can repeat a brew you liked. You will find the Chemex, the Hario drippers and kettles, the AeroPress and its filters, milk thermometers, cupping spoons and blind filters for backflushing an espresso machine in our coffee accessories range. Not sure which one suits the way you drink? Our customer service is happy to think it through with you.