When you think of the Cotswolds, you are most likely to imagine: picture postcard locations, honey tinted Cotswold stone, agriculture and antiques; you may not necessarily think of coffee…until now.

Deep in the heart of Cirencester, on a small unassuming industrial estate, lies what is arguably one of the UK’s finest and upcoming coffee roasters.

RAVE coffee, founded by Rob and Vikki Hodge originally began as a dream of a new life in Australia, when they both gave up their corporate backgrounds to start a mobile coffee van abroad. After training in Sydney and enjoying serving coffee to the many beach goers they returned to the UK when their residency wasn’t granted and decided to begin roasting.

From this point RAVE coffee has expanded and moved from strength to strength, gaining a name for itself as a high quality coffee roaster offering fantastic customer service with an excellent online presence. Rave strive to get their products into the mainstream, selling online through Amazon and their own website, and working closely with Royal Mail to get their beans out to customers within 24hours of being roasted.

One of the added bonuses, if you are lucky enough to live nearby, is that the roasters has its own café in the front of the unit, complete with a full length glass wall to admire the hard work that goes into making their coffee. Combine this with the chilled atmosphere and the mastery that is their in-house barista Donovan and you are definitely in for a treat.

RAVE’s available selection is vast, and includes 7 specialty blends and 15 single origin beans, you can even purchase green beans if you fancy trying your hand at some home roasting, or creating your own blend. They also offer a subscription service available in 3,6 and 12 month packages.

Whilst on my visit I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to partake in a cupping session with the team, and it was immediately clear just how much work and passion goes into producing the right coffee, I can also personally vouch that any future Burundi beans from Rave will be fantastic!

During my time in Cirencester I was accompanied by one of the owners of The Bogota Coffee Co. who after careful consideration decided to source his beans from RAVE(more on that story here). He had placed an order for the shop the night before so we were able to see the actual shop beans being roasted and an explanation of the process involved from one of the expert roasters Pete. This was particularly interesting, even more so to find out that during roasting stage the beans lose 20% of their volume from moisture content.

This visit was certainly an eye opener; I was privileged to get a glimpse into the science behind roasting coffee, and the precision and accuracy that goes into making sure that your cup of coffee is perfect. It is also even clearer to me now, that the chain all the way from farming the beans to roasting and eventually preparation of each cup relies on a very small margin of error and quality standard. So next time your enjoying your next flat white, spare a thought for the effort and work that was involved!

 

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The good folks at RAVE were also kind enough to offer a 10% discount to followers and subscribers of Bean About, it is valid until the 11/05/14, so get ordering whilst you still can!

just enter the code on the Rave site at checkout.

Discount Code: BEAN

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You can also visit RAVE at:

Address: RAVE Coffee, Unit 7, Stirling Works,

Love Lane, Cirencester,Gloucestershire, England  GL7 1YG

Web: http://ravecoffee.co.uk

Twitter: @RaveCoffee