Test Roasts

Ever wondered what actually goes on behind the scenes at a working roastery? Well, now you can taste it.

Every week at our Stafford roastery, our team is profiling new arrivals, refining development curves, trialling blend combinations and generally doing what they do best – obsessing over what makes each coffee tick. It's the work that goes into getting every coffee on our shelves tasting exactly the way we want it to. And it means we regularly produce perfectly good, sealed 1kg bags of specialty coffee that don't quite have a home on our main lineup.

Maybe it's a development roast from a new single origin we're dialling in. Maybe it's a batch roasted perfectly that we used to get tasting notes. Maybe it's a blend trial that tasted great but didn't land precisely where we wanted the profile to sit. Maybe it's a batch that's moved slightly past our freshness window for the main range but will still be drinking beautifully. Whatever the reason, the coffee inside is the same high-quality, responsibly sourced stuff we use across everything we do – roasted on the same machines, by the same team, with the same care.

The only difference? The price.

Pick your coffee – or don't

Where we can, we'll list what's in the bag – the coffee name will appear in the dropdown above so you know what you're getting. If you'd rather leave it to chance, go for the Lucky Dip option and let us surprise you. Either way, you're getting specialty-grade coffee at a price that's hard to argue with.

Because these come from live roasting and profiling work, what's available will change regularly. If something catches your eye, we'd suggest grabbing it – these don't tend to stick around for long.

Good coffee, less waste

This is about more than a good deal. As a certified B Corp, we take our responsibility to minimise waste seriously – not as a marketing exercise, but because it matters. Every bag of coffee represents months of work at origin: land, water, labour, care. When a roast doesn't slot neatly into our main range, the right thing to do isn't to write it off. It's to get it into someone's cup.

Test Roasts are our way of making sure that great coffee – and all the effort that went into growing, processing and shipping it – doesn't go to waste. The producers behind these coffees are still paid exactly the same price. The quality is still there. It just comes to you at a lower cost.

A few things worth knowing

Whole beans only. Because the contents vary from bag to bag, we can't dial in grind recommendations the way we normally would. If you've got a grinder at home, you're sorted – just treat it like any new coffee and adjust to taste.

Sealed 1kg bags. These aren't odds and ends tipped into a sack. Each bag is sealed at the roastery, exactly the same way we pack everything else.

Great for everyday drinking. Think of these as your weekday workhorse – brilliant quality at a gentler price. They're ideal for batch brew, cafetière or as an espresso base if you enjoy dialling in something new.

Coffee age. The coffees will generally be 4+ weeks off roast as, since roasting, our team will have used the beans for a myriad of different purposes.

Availability comes and goes. We'll have these whenever we have them, and we won't when we don't. Stock depends entirely on what's happening on the roastery floor that week, so if you see something you like, don't sleep on it.