Here is the official start of our new series looking at some of the best small chains and local independent coffee shops in Greater Manchester to try and find the best cup of coffee.
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00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World, my name is Theo Huston-Betts and today marks the start
00:03of our Finding the Best Coffee in Manchester series. We introduced this a couple of weeks
00:08ago with a video at Idle Hands and today we're on our way to 200 Degrees Coffee which is the
00:13perfect place to start really because as well as producing some of the best coffee in the city,
00:18it's also a barista school so I'm hoping that they can talk me through exactly what goes into
00:22the perfect cup. So I'm in place at 200 Degrees now, you may have seen me at previous videos here,
00:26it is a place I love, it's very conveniently close to the office and the coffee is great so
00:31I've spoken to one of the leaders of the barista school here to learn a little bit about coffee
00:35so I'm going to throw back to coffee expert Theo in the office and he's going to fill you in on
00:39what makes a good cup of coffee. Hello, Theo the coffee expert here, so I sat down with some of
00:44the barista school staff to learn a little bit about coffee and a lot obviously comes down to
00:48the beans. 200 Degrees for example get theirs from a combination of Brazil, Colombia and Uganda
00:52with the Central and South American flavours being the most common and popular amongst the masses.
00:56Coffee recipes rely on three things, the amount of coffee going into a drink, the amount of time
01:00it spends being extracted and then the liquid amount that comes out before additions. While
01:04we've already settled on the flat white as a vessel for this series, the leader of the barista
01:08school suggested that a cortado which is a 50-50 split of coffee and milk or a simple filter coffee
01:12are other simple ways of judging if you want to try it yourself. At 200 Degrees they roast their
01:17coffee at a lower temperature than usual believing that it provides a smoother, richer taste and
01:21doing all the roasting themselves mean they have more control over the finished product.
01:24That should mean that we're in for a great cup of coffee but let's go see what reviewer Theo
01:29has to say. So there we are I mean we're here now and as I'll remind you we're going to start with
01:34a flat white and a cake basically from every place that we go to and then we'll give a rating
01:38for the coffee, rating for the cake and an overall rating as well. You can sense really that it's a
01:48bit of a darker roast, there's quite a lot of bitterness in the back but a really pleasant
01:52bitterness that then fades away really easily, combines really nicely with the milk and then as
01:56for the cake you've got a carrot cake here that looks absolutely lovely and we'll give that a try
02:02as well. So carrot cake actually is a food that it took me a long while to work my way into.
02:07I was a kid I heard carrot in a cake and thought someone's trying to trick me into vegetables but
02:12basically because I'm a sucker for cream cheese icing I've fallen in love with it.
02:16Oh wow and it just comes together in this amazing sort of just delightful
02:24experience so to be honest I think the cake's getting an 8.5, the coffee's getting a 9 and
02:31because of the atmosphere, because of my love for this place, because of just the overall
02:35enjoyment of being here I think 200 degrees is going to get a 9 out of 10. We are going to
02:40introduce decimal points later on in the series but for now I'm going to set a standard this is a
02:449 out of 10 coffee place in Manchester. So that's all for now, follow Manchester World for more,
02:48we hope this has been informative, we're hopefully looking forward to the next episode and if you've
02:51got anywhere that you want to recommend, anywhere sort of a small chain or local independent we'll
02:56get down there we'll give it a try. So that's all for now, follow Manchester World for more.