Our Story

Independent speciality coffee roasters specialising in responsibly sourced, exceptional and often unconventional speciality coffees from across the world.

Background

My journey began back in 2014, when my friend and I started a speciality coffee shop in Portsmouth called Canvas Coffee.  Being a speciality coffee shop we wanted to showcase some really exciting coffees from different roasters from across the world, so we began showcasing / guesting coffees from different roasters every couple of weeks.

Sometimes we'd get some really amazing tasting coffees which our customers loved, but sometimes we got some fairly boring, flat and unexciting coffees that just didn't taste as good as the samples we tried.

At the beginning we thought it was down to our lack of experience as baristas, but after a while we started to get this sense that maybe it wasn't us.. so I got curious and decided to go and do some courses on coffee roasting! 

First an SCAE Foundation in Coffee Roasting, then a 3 day course on how to roast, then later an intimate workshop with the guy who wrote the book on coffee roasting - Scott Rao.

I bought a small 2.4kg roaster, which we called Tony (after Tony the tiger) and began roasting when the coffee shop was closed - on a Sunday! 

After 37kilos of practice I finally had some coffee we really liked the taste of, so began selling it at the café… we kept being being asked by our customers we finally set up an online store.

8 years on, the hobby has grown a fair bit, we outgrew the 2.4kg roaster and for 2.5 years began ‘Slot Roasting’ at Pharmacie Coffee Roasters in Brighton on a much larger 15kg Giesen Roaster.

Covid had a strange impact on us, sadly we took the decision to close our cafe in Portsmouth & Southsea Railway Station, the roasting however got a lot busier and we purchased a Probat Roaster which we moved into our new roastery space - The Old Chicken Shed behind Southbourne Farm Shop on the border of West Sussex and Hampshire at the beginning of 2022.

You can buy our coffee online here and we are stocked at a number of local and independent businesses and speciality coffee shops and a cafes.