The roastery
A unit off Kilnhouse Yard
One 15-kilo drum roaster, a cupping table and a wall of tins, two streets from the market in Leicester. We've roasted here since 2019.
How it started
A one-kilo roaster in a garage in Clarendon Park
Kit roasted for friends for two years before anyone paid for a bag. The first customers were two cafés on Queens Road, and the first tins were bought because paper bags kept splitting in the post.
We moved into the unit in 2019 with a secondhand drum roaster that Dennis rebuilt over a winter. It's still the one we use. Everything we sell is roasted on it, in batches small enough that one person can taste every one.
Roast days
Tuesday and Friday
The drum goes on at seven. By two o'clock the morning's batches have cooled, been cupped and gone into tins. Here's the week.
Buying
How we buy green coffee
We buy through two UK importers, in lots small enough to roast fresh through a season. Samples arrive in the spring and autumn, and we roast and taste them blind on a Thursday before we commit to anything.
When a lot runs out, it's gone until the next harvest, and the tin changes to say so. Low Lane is the exception: we keep its recipe steady and adjust the components so it tastes the same in March as in October.
The people
Three of us
Roasts every batch and writes the tasting notes on the tins. Eight years behind café counters in Leicester and Sheffield before that.
Looks after the cafés and offices we supply and runs the barista training, here or behind your counter.
Rebuilt the roaster the winter we moved in and keeps it, the grinders and the van running. Thirty years servicing machines like it.
Visit
Saturday mornings
Collect an order, buy a tin over the counter or ask us about your grinder. The roaster is usually cooling down by then, so it's warm inside.
Thanks. That's with us.
We read messages on roast days too, so you'll usually hear back within a working day.