Both GREENBEAN Coffee Roastery and Coffee Shop/Barista Training School having closed for summer vacation from 8th until 25th July Deirdre and I took the rare chance of a few days holiday. We visited a top class hotel for three days pampering and we both agreed that the weather being sunny topped off what was a stay of blissful luxury. The food and wine were superb, as was the accommodation. Add in FRIENDLY staff and I could well understand why the place was full of American tourists (Great to see. Perhaps the recession has finally bottomed out? Fingers crossed.)

I won’t identify the hotel (except to say that it is located in a top tourist town somewhere within the island of Ireland), because…,because…, well, the coffee was c***. Now I don’t mean that the coffee machine had not been cleaned properly (see my blog dated 4th March 2011 – IMPORTANCE OF CLEANING). I mean that the dishwater we were served was, well, no better than dishwater! The coffee at breakfast had obviously been reheated from the night before and the stuff at dinner was just inferior dark roasted (read “burnt black”) coffee probably bought in bulk from some uncaring European roaster.

Obviously the hotel would have been better employed spending a little bit more and serving a quality cup of GREENBEAN. Moreover, without very much effort indeed, they could have sourced some quite acceptable other Irish roasted coffees – I can think of several off-hand.

This is not to say that all hotels act in this fashion. In face GREENBEAN supplies several hotels with quality coffees. These customers obviously care very much about their cliental and is a lesson that might be learned by our offending establishment.

I don’t know what the reason was for our awful coffee experience. Did the owner not care? Did the chef not care? Or perhaps neither of them knew the first thing about what constitutes quality coffee. Perhaps the latter is the case because the tea was pretty good…