When you’re young you’re bound to make a few mistakes along the way, and so it has been with Londinium Espresso’s cups. One thing we got right the first time is choosing Ancap. Ancap are the cup manufacturers that other less expensive cup makers copy. Indeed, even a number of Italian cup brands are no longer made in Italy, but China. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery I guess.
So, our second generation espresso cups are still the work of Ancap, still proudly made in Italy, with every decal applied by hand. 
Our first mistake was adding a logo, ‘art you drink’. Whilst we still think it is an accurate description of what we stand for it comes across as pretentious and a bit off-putting. Artistically the cup also begins to look a bit cluttered, and the fonts tend to conflict with each other. Sometimes less is more.
Our second mistake was incorporating the ‘.com’ into our logo, a move which was intended to make it clear that we are an online business only, but it didn’t stop people ringing up asking where our cafe was, and as time moved on it just looked increasingly like a branding relic from the dot com era. So while the ‘.com’ was dropped from our logo in other areas of the business some time ago, we have had to wait until now to update our cups. Some mistakes you have to live with for a while!
So we have removed the ‘art you drink’ slogan to produce an completely clean internal surface to the cup, as shown below;
Finally, we weren’t happy with the classic tulip shape of the first generation cup. From a purely aesthetic perspective it looks a bit dated. The waisted lower section of the cup meant a much greater volume of espresso had to be held near the top of the cup, and this was achieved by giving the cup a greater diameter at the top than we would like, thereby increasing the surface area on which the crema has to sit, making it thinner, and also allowing the espresso to cool faster than we would like.
We tried all manner of radical designs, including a very narrow, tall espresso cup design, which we loved visually but discovered that the espresso didn’t mix properly as it entered the cup, and instead sat in ‘layers’ in the cup making it unpleasant to drink as you moved through the various layers with their distinctive tastes from various points in the extraction process. Im sure there will be someone somewhere who thinks this layering is a desirable characteristic, but in our opinion it isn’t.
The other important thing we learnt on a trip to Italy is the need for the internal profile of the cup to be what the Italians refer to as ‘egg-shaped’, or elliptical. The cup should not have a flat bottom inside, otherwise it breaks up the crema as it falls from the portafilter spouts into the cup. Our first generation cups were fairly good in this respect, with only a slight internal flat spot, but the second generation of cups are better again, offering a continuous internal curve with essentially no internal flat spot.
The effect of shifting to a cup design with greater internal volume lower down in the cup can be seen in the image below; the cup does not need to be as tall. Additionally the cup is more stable as the centre of mass is now significantly lower in the cup. The reduced surface area also helps to keep the espresso at the correct temperature for longer.
The image below shows the extend to which the outside diameter of the cup has been reduced, relative to the first generation design.
Below we proudly present our second generation Londinium Espresso cup by Ancap. They don’t just look better, they ensure better mixing of the espresso as it enters the cup, whilst not breaking up the crema. They also keep the espresso together to ensure it tastes better too, preserving that dense mouthfeel in the cup for longer.
We will let you know as soon as our second generation espresso cups arrive from Italy.