Artisan Roast has roasted coffee in Edinburgh since 2007. Its first café, opened that year, became a training ground for baristas and a discovery hub for coffee drinkers, and generations of baristas honed their craft there before moving on; the café won the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award in 2012. Today the company counts five cafés and a branch in Chile, where it roasts and supplies coffee to South America.

Four of the cafés are in Edinburgh. The original, on the edge of the New Town, serves the Janszoon blend and a seasonal single origin on espresso, with batch brew and V60 at the brew bar. The Leith café occupies a former funeral director’s office, hosts comedy nights, yoga classes and art workshops, and has a vegetarian kitchen that bakes scones and cinnamon buns daily. Bruntsfield began as a pop-up during the 2011 Fringe and stayed; it is one of the smaller cafés, with pastries and focaccia sandwiches delivered from Leith. Stockbridge has its own kitchen for brunch and homemade cakes. Dogs are welcome in Leith, Bruntsfield and Stockbridge. A pop-up kiosk at St James Quarter sells espresso, beans and pastries.

The roastery at Peffermill has no seating and no retail counter. Artisan Roast roasts each coffee with its brew method in mind, since a coffee that shines as filter will not perform the same way as espresso or in milk, and logs every roast for repeatability. Its quality lab, shared with Coffee Nexus in the city centre, tests and grades every green sample and runs the daily quality control. The company sources from more than twenty countries, through visits and import partners, buys in several quality tiers and scores every coffee it buys. It also sells espresso, brewing and latte art classes.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Artisan Roast