fromcoffeewithlove – From Coffee With Love

I’m so excited to let you know that on 2 March 2021 I launched my first ESPRESSO BLEND coffee in collaboration with Sippy Beans of Dubai, UAE. I always believe that if you are really passionate about something and try your best to persevere with faith and determination to live your dream, you will experience it in some way. This isn’t my first journey of living my dream as you know, because back in 2009, I moved to Cape Town to open up my first coffee shop, called Escape Caffe, which I eventually sold for multiple personal reasons in early 2013.

So, when in October 2020, upon just moving to Dubai, I met with Shehzeen of Sippy Beans (a Dubai based online coffee retailer) I was asked, after talking about coffee for hours, she asked how we could work together, I dared to say, because I had dreamt about it and wanted to articulate it for REAL, that “can we launch a coffee brand using From Coffee With Love”, she said YES almost immediately. Now, who said that dreams don’t come true.

You may be wondering why I have called the espresso blend the “drink of the escapist”, so check my video here to experience my excitement.

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A post shared by Lameen Abdul-Malik (@fromcoffeewithlove)

In short, we worked with one of Dubai’s premier coffee roasters and after having tasted about 10 different blends, I knew that just one sip of what would be become my first espresso blend was all I needed. It just hit the spot, it was so unusual for me and I knew it was a bit unconventional, like LOVE of course, something that cannot be easily explained.

As I usually drink my espresso based drinks with milk, you’ll find hints of chocolate, spicy vanilla, with medium/low acidity and a long lasting caramel taste – so you’ll be looking forward to your next cup.

I always believe that you should follow your passion and pursue your dreams with perseverance as you never know who God will place in your path to make that dream a reality.

Thanks to my wife and my kids for believing in me and being patient when I went to cafes and grilled baristas about their coffee preparation. Thanks to Sippy for putting their trust in launching this blend with me. Looking forward to developing the filter blend soon God willing.

At present the coffee can be ordered using this link https://sippybeans.com/products/lameen-abdul-malik-custom-espresso-blend?variant=39251631931495

If you’ve been following me for 10 years, then you’ll know that….. drum roll, 2017 will mark the 10 year anniversary of fromcoffeewithlove.com – time really flies when you’ve fallen in love with coffee, been drinking it with scrutiny and writing about your experience, phew!

It all started when I decided to delve back into my roots to be of service and how I had wanted to start a coffee shop some day but then found out that I didn’t know anything about coffee. So, I started reading about it, making the coffee geek.com my fave website. It was so fascinating that there was so much about a bean and how to get the best out of it. Then came the movement – the launch of cafe culture – an annual London coffee fair, where I met soon to be WBC champ, Jim Hoffmann and others – the bug had bitten me – I wanted more and then I started thinking about the whole idea of coffee.

And having amassed a whole lot of what I thought back then was knowledge about coffee , I thought, I’ve got to share this with as many people as possible, so they don’t get conned into paying for rubbish coffee.

I recall with excitement how I started the blog – the concept of the drink of the escapist – sipping a drink made with berries grown in some exotic land, dried and shipped mainly to Europe to be roasted and sold to cafes. The whole concept really intrigued me and that’s why when I had a caffe, it was called, Escape Caffe. I used the Italian word for coffee because like it or not, it was the Italians who having brought the drink to Europe through Sicily made people intrigued by the concept of frothed milk with a strong tasting coffee, espresso and its brothers and sisters, cappuccino and latte.

So, to mark this special year, I promise

to try and blog more
go down memory lane with some pics
to try and blog about other things related to coffee
to give away some coffee during the anniversary month – hint, it will be in August 2017
to try and blog about cafes differently
investigate the possibility of writing a book based on my blog
dream more

So, here’s to a special date 17.01.17 – the year of 7s – a special number with generations gone by and the original number for a single espresso, 7 grammes.

Live is too short to drink bad coffee.