I love coffee. Enough to have gone looking for it in Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. I'm not a fancy barista and I don't own a roastery, though I have friends who do.
Checking out new roasteries is where this all began. Then I saw someone doing something similar in the USA, and thought the UK needed one of its own.
What was already here didn't do the job. The "top 10" lists were written by people who hadn't tried the coffee. The directories were thin. The brand-owned sites were funnels for their own products. So I started building Roasterlist. It's at 493 roasters now and I'm still adding them. If there's one I've missed, tell me about it.
The aim is straightforward. Find every UK coffee roaster I can. Write a real description of each one. Keep the data current. Don't take payment from roasters to be listed. Be transparent about how the site is funded and how the editorial works.
Read carefully. Research thoroughly. Write plainly. Tell you what makes a roaster distinct from the next one without dressing it up.
For each roaster on the site, I read their full website, look at their public statements (interviews, press, social), and write a description that gives a reader a real sense of what they're like. The full process is on the methodology page.
A description covers who the roaster is, where they sit in the UK scene, what they're trying to do, and what's notable about them. It isn't a tasting review. If you want tasting notes, go to the roaster's own site.
I don't copy marketing copy. I don't generate descriptions from a template. I write each one as if I were describing the roaster to a friend who asked.
None on the editorial side. I don't own, work for, advise, or take payment from any UK coffee roaster. I don't have a stake in any of them. If that ever changes for a specific roaster, that connection will be declared on the relevant page and that roaster will be excluded from any "best of" feature.
The site is funded by affiliate links and (when we cross the threshold) display advertising. The full picture is on the affiliate disclosure page. Affiliate revenue funds the time spent on Roasterlist; it never decides what I write.
Editorial questions, corrections, suggestions, complaints, or anything else go to [email protected]. I read everything that lands there.
If you're a UK roaster who'd like to update your listing or correct something we've written, please email from a domain we can match to your business. It speeds things up.
The principles behind the editorial: see the editorial standards page.
How the directory is built: see the methodology.
How the site is funded: see the affiliate disclosure.