About Us
Two Scots. One obsession. Hundreds of bags of coffee.
Like a lot of people, Clair and D-A found themselves working from home in 2020 with a suddenly very important question: why does this coffee taste so much better than the stuff from the office machine?
What started as an idle curiosity turned quickly into a proper rabbit hole — a local Scottish roaster, then a subscription box, then a burr grinder, then the arguments about grind size. UK Coffee Reviews is the spreadsheet of tasting notes they kept throughout, turned into something other people can actually read.
How We Review
Every coffee on this site has been bought and brewed by us — Clair and D-A, in our kitchen, on our actual kit. We're not a faceless publishing operation. We taste everything ourselves and come at it from the perspective of two people who just really love a good cup of coffee.
We use a mix of espresso, AeroPress, V60, and French press depending on what the coffee is meant for. We look at:
- Flavour — what it actually tastes like, in plain English
- Aroma — before and after brewing
- Value — is it worth it against the alternatives at that price?
- Versatility — does it work across different brew methods?
- Where to buy — UK-specific, in pounds sterling, no import faff
We also have a slight obsession with discovering new coffee places whenever we travel — if you've got a recommendation for somewhere worth visiting in Scotland (or beyond), we'd genuinely love to hear it.
AI and How We Use It
We're honest about this: we use AI to help us write up our reviews. The tasting, the scoring, the opinions — those are all ours. But turning a set of tasting notes and scores into a readable, well-structured review is something AI genuinely helps with, and we'd rather be upfront about that than pretend otherwise.
Where AI assistance has been used in a review, it's marked clearly. We check everything for accuracy before it goes live. Think of it as us doing the tasting and the AI helping us write it up neatly — like having a very diligent editor who never asks for a byline.
Our Scoring
Ratings are out of 5, based on our combined scores from multiple brew sessions. A 4.0 is genuinely good — something we'd buy again without hesitation. A 4.5 or above is exceptional and earns a spot in the "definitely reorder" pile. We don't inflate scores to be nice, and we won't give a 5/5 just because something is expensive.
Coffee Gadgets, Café Visits & the YouTube Channel That Might Happen
Aside from beans, we're enthusiastic about the gear — grinders, kettles, scales, espresso machines, weird little hand-powered contraptions. If it's coffee-adjacent and available in the UK, there's a decent chance one of us has already bought it.
We also love visiting independent coffee shops when we get the chance. Scotland has some brilliant ones, and we try to document them as we go. One day — and we're keeping this deliberately vague — there might even be a YouTube channel. We've discussed it. Clair has camera opinions. D-A has microphone opinions. Watch this space.
Affiliate Links
Some links on this site are affiliate links — we earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. This is what keeps the site running and the coffee fund topped up. We only link to products we'd actually recommend. See our full affiliate disclosure.
Say Hello
Got a coffee you think we should try? A local roaster we've missed? A brewing technique argument you want a second opinion on? We're always up for it. Drop us a line at hello@uk-coffee-reviews.com.