From a hobby to a profession
Like many small business, Conval Coffee Roasters was born out of a hobby, which itself was born out of a great love of fantastic coffee.
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From pre-ground supermarket bought coffee in a caffetiere, to finding a local roaster and grinding the coffee fresh for each brew, things progressed.
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The real turning point was not long after we first met, having a coffee in Artisan Roast in Edinburgh. This coffee was fantastic, so very different, complex and delicious, how was it possible for it to stand so far apart from anything we'd had before?
Those first coffees in Artisan Roast
Then started a journey hunting down different roasters, different origins and processing methods, one which we're glad to say we're still on as no matter how far you come there's always something new to be discovered.
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After years of enjoying everyone else's coffee we decided to give it a go ourselves. With Mr Conval Coffee having an engineering background the need to tinker is always great, so we bought and modified an electric popcorn popper and began roasting coffee 100 grams at a time. It was crude, noisy, but great fun and very rewarding. The chances are those first few batches weren't quite as tasty in the real world as we thought they were, but it was a start.
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We progressed to a larger roaster which increased our capacity to around 200 grams per batch, and the learning continued. After a few years of learning, tasting, and sharing coffee among friends and family, we realised that we were getting great feedback on our coffees, and that maybe we could push things a little further. So a basic business plan was penned and plans laid out as to how we could achieve our goal of roasting commercially, albeit on a very small scale. That was about 18 months ago (it's mid 2021 as this is being typed), and we now have a very shiny 1kg roaster in our roasting space (the garage...) on which we are now producing our best roasts yet.
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