About Us

I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in my mid-thirties… frankly I needed the caffeine as I’d just started working at a major bank.  A couple of years later, my wife suggested that we should acquire a coffee machine so that we could serve coffee to guests at the end of dinner parties (do these still happen?).  We ended up purchasing a budget-friendly combo espresso machine and grinder.  Budget-friendly meant two things… both bad.  Brew water temperature control was poor, and the quality of the grinder was even worse.  I remember being inordinately proud of the sub-standard coffee I was producing.  It is interesting to me that I have no recollection of the coffee beans that I was using at the time.

It was a slippery slope from there.  First was an upgraded coffee grinder.  I couldn’t believe how much positive impact a good grinder had on the quality of the coffee I was making!  We then purchased an E61 heat exchanger coffee machine.  How magical it was to have consistent brew temperature control as well as the ability to texture milk whenever I wanted in the coffee making workflow!  Now that our equipment wasn’t a real limitation, I started to look for coffee beans which would give me goose bumps… and I couldn’t find them despite sampling coffee broadly across the industry.

So, in 2012 I decided to start roasting my own coffee beans.  I purchased a very small Taiwanese electric drum roaster and found myself on an extremely steep learning curve.  I’m not going to lie, some of those early roasts were truly dire!  But over the course of thousands of roasts I was learning how to produce coffee that I loved, balancing flavour, mouthfeel and acidity.  I’ve always been fascinated by what my taste buds communicated and you won’t be surprised that I consider myself a foodie, a passable cook, as well as someone who has a strong interest in wine and whisky.  For many people, there appears to be considerable overlap between all of these interests and a love of coffee.

In 2015 I purchased a larger roaster and started sharing roasted coffee with family, friends and work colleagues.  I was also raising money for charities via roasting which I found very satisfying.  It was encouraging to hear from many people that my coffee was now their favourite.  This sparked something… so fast-forwarding…

In 2022 I acquired a third and even larger roaster, launched a website and started this business.  It’s been an exciting journey and I hope you’ll come along for the ride!