Rounton Coffee | Blog

05/04/2019
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Arabica vs Robusta – The Clash of the Coffees

You’ll have seen it everywhere – from supermarket shelves to fast food outlets; from high street coffee chains to the most niche speciality coffee houses – ‘100% Arabica’ seems to be something that everyone boasts about. But what does it actually mean? We want to go one step further than just saying we use 100% Arabica coffees, and explain the background behind the claim: what that guarantees to you as a consumer, and what the alternatives are. First things first, a little science lesson… A quick delve into our biology... Read More

07/03/2019
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Introducing… Tomas Keavney

Name and Occupation Tom Keavney – Training & Marketing If I’m not roasting, I’m out and about catching up with the people we supply with coffee, running our Barista Skills Course. I like to share as much as I can about how we source our coffee, how we roast it, and how to make it taste delicious. You can also find me writing all sorts of stuff – whether that’s keeping the Rounton Coffee social media accounts up to date with what we’re getting up to, writing blogs for our... Read More

18/02/2019
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Introducing… David Burton

  Name and Occupation David Burton – Head Of Coffee. My role involves deciding which green coffees we source, by assessing samples from farms all around the world. I also oversee all aspects of quality control, from the grading of green coffee, to making sure that our roasts are showcasing the best of what our coffees can offer. You’re only as good as your green! How did you get into coffee? Like the majority of coffee professionals, I fell in head first (straight down the rabbit hole). I met a very enthusiastic... Read More

11/02/2019
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From Origin To Cup – Roasting

At the heart of what we do, we take raw, green coffee beans, and roast them. But what does it mean to take a hessian sack full of beans and transform them into something delicious? There’s something unassuming about a green bean – it doesn’t have the same standout aroma as a roasted one, and to chew on one would be nothing short of disappointing – vegetal and grassy. The magic, of course, is in the roast.  In the simplest possible terms, the roaster is where the green beans are... Read More

04/02/2019
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It’s A Bit Like Wine: Coffee From Around The World

Historically, it has been all too simple to think of coffee as just a thing that you find in a bag on a shelf in a supermarket. It has been there to serve the purpose of keeping us caffeinated, and aside from how strong we want it to be, there haven’t been that many other factors to consider when choosing what to brew at home. In more recent years, people have been paying more attention to the descriptors that are attached to the coffee they are buying. Whether that’s picking... Read More

04/02/2019
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Introducing… Guy Snead

Next up in our ‘Introducing…’ series is the man who keeps our coffee tasting great, Guy! If you’ve ever placed an order with us, he’s the one pulling the strings so that everything goes according to plan. He’s the King of Efficiency, a bottomless pit when it comes to food, and the most curious man you’ll ever meet… Name and Occupation Guy Snead – Head Roaster. My job is to make sure that the way we roast coffee is up to date with the latest practices in the industry –... Read More

22/01/2019
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Introducing… Mike Riley

Welcome to our ‘Introducing…’ series! We’ve interviewed some of the people that make Rounton Coffee tick – whether that’s people in our team, people who we’ve met along the way, or figures in the coffee industry that help us do what we do – we want to be able to share with you the stories of the people behind the coffee you’re drinking. First up is arguably the most knowledgable mind in coffee that any of us know, the brilliant Mike Riley!  Name and Occupation I’m Mike Riley. I’m in... Read More

03/01/2019
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From Origin To Cup – Processing Coffee

Cherries make a pretty sweet treat – finding the ripest, sweetest fruits in summer, and chewing away at the luscious juicy pulp and skins as we enjoy the sweet, rich flavours, before spitting out the stone at the centre of the fruit.  This stone – or seed – to be precise, might be considered an inconvenience to our enjoyment of those delicious cherries!  With coffee cherries, it’s the exact opposite. In this case, the treasure is the two seeds at the heart of the fruit, the rest of which has... Read More

01/12/2018
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Why become a Q grader?

By David Burton Any serious coffee professional will tell you that objectively assessing coffee quality is probably one of the most difficult things to do. This is because no matter how hard we try, we will always let our own bias get the better of us, especially when it comes to something as subjective as flavour. Come New Year, I’ll be into my fifth year in coffee, and leaving my own bias at the door is still something I have to keep in check (however, I still love a bloody... Read More

16/11/2018
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From Origin To Cup – How Coffee Grows

As Rounton Coffee Roasters nears its 5th birthday, we’ve decided that rather than telling you the story of the last five amazing years, it might be much more useful and interesting to run a series of blogs which will tell the bigger story – Coffee – From Origin to Cup. These are blogs that we wanted to write in our infancy, but at that stage, we didn’t feel that we had enough experience to speak with any authority on such topics. These days, we’re still trying to learn as much... Read More