Bailies Coffee Roasters roasts in Belfast. The roasting team builds an individual profile for each coffee, refined in a dedicated coffee lab and roasted on Probat equipment. The green coffee comes directly from farming partners, through long-term relationships. One of them is with Comepcafé, a farmer-led cooperative in Cauca, Colombia. Jan Komarek, the green bean buyer, first travelled there in 2015, and since the first container that year the cooperative has sent Bailies more than 26 containers, 527 tons of coffee.

The range comes in three collections. The Signature Blends are for espresso, from Umbra, the darkest roast, to Pendo, a fully certified Fairtrade blend. The Single Origins work on espresso and filter, and include a sugarcane decaf from Santander. The Microlots are lightly roasted seasonal lots for filter, from producers such as Oscar and Francisca Chacón at Las Lajas in Costa Rica and Rogelio Aguirre Jr. at El Limonar in Guatemala.

The roastery is also Bailies’ training campus, accredited by the Specialty Coffee Association and, by its own account, the first of its kind in the country. Authorised SCA Trainers run courses there, from a three-hour Home Espresso Workshop for beginners to the SCA Barista Skills Foundation and private training for businesses. An engineering team with over 40 years of combined experience services coffee equipment across Ireland and the UK. Bailies also sells brewing equipment and loose-leaf tea.

The current retail range is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Bailies Coffee Roasters