GRAVEL CULTURE: Baristrocracy - a little bit of Oz in the north-east of the UK

Posted By Gravel Union On 31 January 2020

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Coffee culture in the UK, like a lot of the world, is developing at an incredible rate. It seems like every week a new café is opening up, an artisan roastery has set up shop or a coffee machine shoehorned into the back of a repurposed vehicle has popped up somewhere different.

The UK Gravel Union office is located in the north-east of the country, in Newcastle upon Tyne. We’re incredibly fortunate here to have a vibrant and growing coffee culture and this is everything from groups of gravel riders meeting at cycling-friendly cafes, to a number of artisan roasteries where the owners and staff are keen gravel riders.

We all know about the tie-in between cycling and coffee and this translates to gravel riding and coffee too of course. But normally this relationship is just skin deep – often no more than the ubiquitous pre-ride café meet-up or a coffee company logo printed on a cycling jersey. But what about coffee-based companies where the direct-tie in is so obvious that when you visit, there is a collection of gravel bikes sitting next to a pile of coffee bean sacks and where the location of the business was, at least in part, influenced by ready access to the local gravel trail network?

A few weeks ago we were invited over for a freshly poured flat white and a chat with Kate and Alex from Baristocracy Coffee where we chatted about how gravel fits into their busy lives. As well as a chat, we put together a short film with them, which you can see here:

Alex: I was born above my parent’s coffee roastery in Sydney - school holidays were spent packing coffee, roasting coffee, playing in and around coffee, so it’s something that I’ve always done.

Kate: I didn’t know anything about speciality coffee until I met Alex when I was on a work holiday visa in Australia. In the time I lived there, I moved away from my old choice of Starbucks with hazelnut syrup to real speciality coffee and then we decided to start our own business.

Alex: Kate’s from here originally so it was a toss-up a few years ago whether we do it in Sydney which is already a saturated market or move to the north-east. We knew we wanted to set up our own place somewhere - it was just a matter of choosing where . We kept coming back over to visit family and saw the speciality coffee market grow. It sparked something in us. We wanted to be part of it.

Kate: We thought there were a lot of possibilities here and it’s really expensive to live in Sydney. We had our son there, but we couldn’t really start our own business there because of the cost. We find it family friendly here - we have a huge amount of support - both here and in Sydney, but practical support here.

Alex: No, not at all. The spotlight has been put on not just where you get your coffee from, but who’s making it, who’s roasting it, who’s growing it - all the way back to the farm side. So, it’s just shifting the spotlight from the cup back along the whole process involved in speciality coffee. As far as quality goes, it’s continuing to get better and better – it has happened in food and wine, it’s now coffee’s turn to make big steps to improve the quality you get in your cup every day.

Kate: It seems to go hand in hand with all the things that people are looking for - better quality. Whether it’s getting fish directly from a fish monger or sausages from a local butcher. Based on our experience in Sydney, there’s plenty of room for different roasters and people are looking to support independent roasters, which is great.

Alex: I am from Australia! Speciality coffee is part of our culture now. Knowledge is a huge thing. Not to say the others don’t have that, just that I have a lot of experience in the field working with a lot of different people - from growers, to other roasters in the industry. Working and judging internationally has been huge - I gained a lot of experience from that – it’s the backbone for us to be able to build really good quality coffee.

Kate: I think the independent roasters we have in the north-east all have their own flavour profile that there going for. We roast Ozzie style coffee, with high notes of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Our blend changes from season to season, but we’ve always got this theme running through it and if anyone’s been to Australia, it will remind them of their travels. It’s very classically Australian coffee and that’s what we are all about.

Alex: They have always just gone together! Especially growing up cycling in Australia, you always met in a café before a ride – it’s a logical starting point - everyone grabs a coffee before they go Often a mid-ride coffee or coffee and cake if you’ve had a big ride.

Kate: I guess on a practical level, people are looking for somewhere that they can stop with their bike and be able to see it so they know it’s safe - especially in Sydney you’ll have huge groups of people sitting outside with their bikes in view, drinking their coffee.

Alex: Typically yes although it’s changed a bit here, with cafés not opening till 8 or 9 am – it’s a little difficult to get one in the morning, especially if you’re doing an early morning ride in which case I’ll just have an AeroPress at home normally – I always have coffee before I ride.

Alex: It’s not having to stress about traffic. It means you can concentrate on riding or even concentrate on nothing. That hour or so that I get out there is a big stress relief from work, from life and it’s that chance to enjoy what I am doing - the scenery is better when you’re off-road compared to a couple of lanes of road, stressing about cars flying past. It makes the whole experience more enjoyable - there are also areas that you wouldn’t normally go and see that are opened up to you.

Alex: 4-5 years now. Here (north-east of England) for 3 years and Australia for a couple of years. I’m venturing more and more off road and off the beaten track.

Alex: Probably Wagga Gears and Beers - they did a Dirty 130. They do it every year now. They did 130km - 80km on road and last 50km off road. It had a granfondo feel to it with a lovely community atmosphere - just bumping into groups and riding along at your own pace and chatting to different people – I found that side of it really lovely.

Alex: One of the best things about being in the north of England is that there’s a whole series of national parks which we can get out and explore – I see people venturing out a bit more and exploring more as they ride.

Kate: It’s great because our roastery is near the wagon ways [an extensive network of former railway lines now converted to gravel cycling and walking trails] so we have quite a few customers coming here by bike. We had one guy who came in and had five espressos and then flew off on his bike! We are thinking in the future of opening at weekends - I know more people have the opportunity to ride at weekends, so then we can offer pre-ride coffees.

Alex: One of our clients has little a Peugeot car which they somehow managed to shoehorn an espresso machine into the back of. They’re based at a local country park and they do a fantastic job on the weekends there. The coffee and gravel riding scene here is starting to integrate more and more.

Kate: At our roastery, people often come in for a coffee, we do coffee by the cup, but you can also buy bags of coffee to take home - we can grind it for however you brew it at home. We also offer home barista courses - Alex has been teaching for a long time. We offer 2.5hr courses which have been really popular - people can buy gift vouchers for those also, which have been quite popular over Christmas for presents.

For more information about Baristocracy, please check out their website