Category: Coffee

Welcome, coffee lovers! Have you ever thought about the convenience of having your favourite coffee beans delivered to your doorstep every month? In this digital age, UK-based coffee subscription services are brewing up a storm, ensuring you never run out of your caffeine fix. In this blog post, we explore the top coffee subscription services in the UK, their unique propositions, and how to select the best for you.

The Concept of Coffee Subscription Services

What is a Coffee Subscription Service?

A coffee subscription service, simply put, is a recurring delivery of freshly roasted coffee straight to your door. This means no more last-minute dashes to the grocery store when you realise you’ve run out of coffee. Whether you crave artisanal blends, single-origin beans, or speciality roasts, these subscriptions cater to every coffee whim you might have.

Why Coffee Subscriptions?

There are a few compelling reasons to try a coffee subscription. First, the convenience factor – no more running out of coffee or forgetting to restock. Second, you can explore a plethora of coffee varieties, curated by experts from around the globe. And last but not least, your coffee is always fresh, which undoubtedly translates to better-tasting brews.

What to Look for in a Coffee Subscription Service

Variety of Coffees

The best coffee subscriptions offer a wide variety of beans to please your palate. From dark roasts to light roasts, and blends to single-origin beans, diversity is key.

Customisation Options

Does the service allow you to customise your subscription? The frequency of delivery, volume of coffee, and ability to match your specific taste preferences are important aspects to consider.

Sustainability Practices

Coffee lovers today care not just about taste, but also about sustainability. Check if the subscription service uses environmentally friendly packaging, sources beans from Fair Trade and organic farms, and follows sustainable business practices.

Top Coffee Subscription Services in the UK

We’ve handpicked some of the best coffee subscription services available in the UK, based on customer reviews, coffee variety, customisation options, and sustainability practices.

Aixo Coffee

Aixo coffee is roasted in the UK, but inspired by the city of Barcelona. The website is super user-friendly and easy to navigate. Enjoy a steady supply of freshly roasted ‘barista-grade’ coffee beans (whole or ground). Aixo also makes for an ideal gift for coffee enthusiasts in your life. A convenient voucher that you can pass on makes it a gift that keeps on giving.

Aixo Coffee

Rave Coffee

Rave Coffee’s slogan is ‘no jargon, no BS, just great coffee, made simple.’ Widen your coffee knowledge by tailoring its subscriptions to your taste preferences. Exclusive new coffees from around the world each month.

Rave Coffee

Pact Coffee

Pact Coffee say they have a flavour profile for everyone. From chocolate to fruity and floral notes. Different roast profiles too suiting multiple tastes. Up to 200 unique speciality coffees are available over the course of a year.

Pact Coffee

Beans Coffee Club

Beans Coffee Club allow you to take a quiz to be matched to coffees based on your tastes. Then once subscribers, receive freshly roasted coffee at a frequency to suit you, in letterbox and eco-friendly packaging. Rate and review to refine what you’re sent next time.

Beans Coffee Club

Batch Coffee

Batch Coffee offer curated fortnightly or monthly boxes that showcase the best speciality coffee from around the world. Receive 2 different bags each month from different independent UK roasters.

Batch Coffee

Origin Coffee Roasters

Origin was founded in 2004 as an independent speciality coffee roaster with an ethos to source incredible coffee through a sustainable approach. Origin is one of the longest-standing speciality coffee roasters in the UK and offers many of their coffees as part of a subscription.

Origin Coffee Roasters

Hasbean

Hasbean offer a range of super rare collections alongside their regular signature blends as part of their subscription. They state they hand-pick exceptional single origin every week and that they roast coffee fresh to order.

Hasbean

Caravan Coffee Roasters

Caravan offers a free gift with your first order from their freshly roasted coffee subscription. Plus they include products from their favourite brands, alongside exclusive on-going perks and discounts.

Caravan Coffee Roasters

Conclusion: Choosing the Right Coffee Subscription Service

While all the coffee subscription services mentioned offer unique experiences, it’s essential to choose one that best fits your taste preferences, coffee-drinking habits, and commitment to sustainability. Remember, coffee is not just a drink, but an experience to be savoured.

Final Thoughts

Coffee subscription services are changing the way we enjoy our beloved brew. So, why wait? Today, embark on a caffeinated journey and discover new flavours, roast profiles, and origins with a coffee subscription. It’s time to elevate your morning ritual and savour the convenience and diversity a coffee subscription service offers. Happy brewing!

Plus you’ve read this far, so here’s 30% off your first month’s Aixo coffee subscription on us. Just use code coffee30 at the checkout.*

*Available on the first month’s delivery, valid once per customer. Offer may be retracted at any time.

The careful harvest of coffee beans has a direct correlation with the quality of your cup of coffee.

It won’t be a surprise to hear that as a rule, coffee beans that have been harvested at peak ripeness, will generally taste the best. At each subsequent stage post-harvest, great care is taken to preserve quality, rather than improve upon it.

The biggest challenge to most coffee farmers is the landscape on which the coffee trees grow. With the higher altitudes and hilly terrain, navigating between trees can be a challenge (although not the case everywhere).

Machine harvesting

In countries with areas of flatter land and high altitudes such as Brazil, it’s possible to operate coffee-harvesting machinery. The machines will vibrate the branches until the fruit comes loose and falls to nets laid out below. There are a few downsides to harvesting using this method though, such as shaking loose fruit that isn’t yet ripe. This means they need to be hand-sorted post-harvest, at which point the excess twigs and leaves that fall during the process need to be picked out and discarded too. The cost of this method is generally cheaper, but quality can be sacrificed too as a result.

Strip picking

A large amount of coffee harvesting is still done by hand to preserve quality, but also if it’s not possible to use machinery due to challenging landscapes. One of the faster manual methods is to strip the fruit from a branch in a single swift action. Quick, but can potentially mean that some unripened fruit will end up being harvested. Although no expensive equipment is required, there is a need to pay for labour to sort the fruit later.

Hand-picking

The highest-quality coffee producers will hand-pick their coffee beans, selecting only the fruit at peak ripeness. The unripened fruit remains on the tree meaning it can be picked at a later date, which results in less waste, maximising the yield. It’s much more labour intensive and it can be difficult to incentivise pickers to only harvest ripened fruit if they’re paid by the weight they’ve picked.

The first known cultivation of coffee trees was in Ethiopia where the same Typica variety is grown today.

Since the first known cultivation of coffee, many other varieties exist which you may have heard of, such as Bourbon, Mundo Novo, and Caturra. Some result from natural mutation, but others have been cross-bred. It’s possible for coffee bean varieties to have native taste characteristics, but some also express the terroir where they’re grown. Cultivation and processing techniques can also affect how the coffee in your cup tastes.

Historically, coffee beans have only been traded based on origin, i.e. which region or country they come from, but more recently there has been a focus on the variety of coffee trees that produced the beans being imported and roasted. It’s important to note that although the bean variety can have an impact on taste, the way the beans are prepared into a cup of coffee can also impact the final aromas and flavours you taste so this guide only focuses on the more distinct differences between varieties.

Typica

Dutch merchants are the first known traders to distribute coffee widely around the world, meaning this variety would have been at the centre of this trade. As a fruit, it is usually ruby red and produces an excellent cup of coffee. Yields of Typica are small compared to other coffee bean varieties but it’s still grown around the globe and is known by many other names including Arabigo, Sumatra, and Criollo.

Bourbon

The island of Réunion lays claim as the birthplace of the Bourbon variety (Bourbon was the name of the island when discovered). Bourbon is a natural mutation of the Typica bean with yields greater than its parent. Many coffee connoisseurs agree that it has a natural sweetness giving it a greater demand by coffee manufacturers. The colour of the fruit can vary between red, yellow and sometimes orange too.

Mundo Novo

A hybrid of the Typica and Bourbon varieties, Mundo Novo is named after the place it was discovered in Brazil in the 1940s. It yields a high volume of fruit and is more resistant than its parent beans to both disease and difficult growing conditions. It also grows at higher altitudes more successfully, up to 1,200 metres, meaning a larger surface area is viable to cultivate the variety.

Caturra

Another Brazilian variety, but this time, a natural mutation of Bourbon. Again, a high-yielding variety, but it can overbear, meaning the tree produces more fruit than it can sustain. This leads to dieback but hasn’t put producers off in Colombia and other Central American nations. Higher altitudes lead to better quality and lower yield which suits the variety well. As the trees grow lower to the ground it also makes it easier to pick the fruit.

Catuai

A hybrid variety, created by crossing the Caturra and Mundo Novo varieties in the 1950s and 1960s. Selected because of the dwarf characteristics of the Caturra variety making it easy to pick, with the high yield and durability of the Mundo Novo fruit. In terms of colour, the fruit is mostly red and yellow.

Maragogype

An easily recognisable variety due to its large fruit size. Sometimes nicknamed the ‘Elephant’ due to the bean size, it was first discovered in Brazil, it’s a mutation of the Typica variety. The tree produces large leaves but has a lower yield compared to other varieties. The fruit is often red in colour.

Set the mood and match our coffee to music and fragrance.

Music and coffee

From the songs that wake us up in the morning alongside our favourite cup of coffee, to the music you relax to at 3 pm during your well-deserved coffee break. Music enhances your coffee ritual to fit the mood, so take a look at a few of our favourite coffee moments and complementary Spotify playlists.

The ‘wake me up’ playlist

The ‘3 pm coffee break’ playlist

The ‘epic evening feels’ playlist

Fragrance and coffee

Now although we wouldn’t necessarily recommend fragrance as it can compete with the aromas and tastes of your coffee, we can recommend fragrance to complement your mood and the occasion. Below are a few of our favourite candle scents.

Malin+Goetz Cannabis

Definitely not one for the faint-hearted, this rich and slightly smoky scent is addictive, but not in the way you’d think. Reminiscent of lazy afternoons playing your favourite chillout song on the sofa sipping on a cup of your favourite Aixo coffee. Earthy cedarwood, patchouli and sandalwood.

Shop at Malin+Goetz

The White Company Noir

A sensual, sophisticated scent to help you wind down after a busy day. As the night draws in, the soft elegant hints of vanilla blend effortlessly with amber, mandarin, and aromatic sandalwood helping to create a warm and cosy, calming atmosphere.

Shop at The White Company