Pre-ride coffee, mid-ride coffee, post-ride coffee. Is there ever a bad time for a ride-related coffee? Like most gravel riders we know, we’re completely hooked on bean juice. And, much like gravel-loving magpies, we’re also drawn to anything shiny. The catch is that shiny coffee gear usually comes with a hefty price tag. So, when we first heard about the Love Espresso Club, created by the UK distributor of Rocket Espresso, it immediately caught our attention. The idea of getting access to a top-tier coffee machine and grinder without the high upfront cost sounded pretty appealing. If you’re curious to learn more, read on.
Join our club
For anyone who grew up in the UK in the 70s or 80s, the phrase “join our club” probably brings to mind a chocolate-covered biscuit and a gloriously cheesy jingle. Jump to the present day and the Love Espresso Club still has a touch of chocolate involved, though now it’s more likely to appear as a tasting note in a batch of their freshly roasted coffee beans!
Launched back in 2024, the Love Espresso Club was the brainchild of the UK Rocket distributor, Pro Espresso. With former pro-cyclist Russ Downing as one of the co-owners, they clearly realised the link between coffee, cycling and Rocket Espresso (which itself was co-founded by two cycling fans). The owners of Pro Espresso realised that for many people, it wasn’t easy to justify the outlay required to own a Rocket espresso machine and a Rocket grinder. When you add in the cost of buying decent-quality coffee beans and regular maintenance on your coffee machine, the investment becomes a major one. So, the idea was formed to set up a club where, for a fixed fee of £75 per month, you receive a Rocket Appartamento TCA espresso machine, a Rocket Faustino grinder, a monthly delivery of 1kg of freshly roasted beans and technical support if you need it.
Rocket powered
The relationship between Rocket Espresso and cycling (of all genres) is well established. If you were to sneak onto a team bus from one of the current pro-tour road race teams, there’s a very high chance you’d find a Rocket machine sitting quietly in the corner, waiting to fulfil the riders’ pre and post-race caffeine requirements. Rocket are involved with team sponsorship too – they support Bahrain Victorious, Soudal Quick Step and Tudor Pro Cycling amongst others. Many of today’s top pro racers have a Rocket machine in their arsenal (or more likely, in their kitchen…) too. If that wasn’t evidence enough of their cycling heritage, you can even buy a range of Rocket-branded cycling kit, so that your fandom is visible to everyone you meet.
“Would you like to try out one of our machines and some of our coffee beans?” asked Russ when we were chatting to him about the Love Espresso Club. That sounded like one of those dream opportunities that would have been complete madness to turn down. There was already a Rocket Faustino grinder in the Gravel Union Towers coffee corner, so we didn’t need any arm-twisting to add a Rocket coffee machine into our set-up (even if it was only on temporary loan).
Tipping the scales at 25kg, the Appartamento TCA is a serious bit of kit. It has real presence on the countertop, but in a refined rather than flashy way — the sort of machine that will draw appreciative looks from those who know their coffee. You’ll need plenty of worktop space if you’re planning to install a Rocket though; it dwarfs the Gaggia Classic that currently acts as Gravel Union’s caffeine workhorse. The obvious question, though, was whether the new machine could deliver better — and more consistent — coffee than our existing setup?
Once you have your coffee machine and grinder set up, the missing vital ingredient in making the perfect brew is of course, the coffee beans. The choice of beans available on the market is mind-boggling, with everything from own-label supermarket brands to well-known multinationals to speciality roasts. With such a vast array to choose from, how do you narrow down which ones match your taste preferences, your budget and that will play nicely with your Rocket setup? The team behind the Love Espresso Club have come up with a cunning plan to help get your coffee-making dialled in as efficiently as possible. If you sign up for membership, your monthly payment includes either 1kg or 2kg of beans (depending on which price point you sign up for) and you have a choice of six blends. The Love Espresso website has a detailed section which gives an overview of the different roasts and an AI-based ‘bean quiz’ to help narrow down your choice. The quiz works whether you’re a regular purchaser of speciality beans or you’re dipping your toe in as a first-time user and it works remarkably well. We went through the process, added in our taste preferences and out came the answer – Blend No 5. We placed an order and not long afterwards, a bag of freshly roasted beans arrived on our doorstep.
Time to dig out the lab coat
Having had more than twenty years’ worth of experience using a Gaggia Classic coffee machine, what would the process be like for switching over to a Rocket? Every machine has its foibles and for some of us, learning the peculiarities of your chosen setup and figuring out how to make everything place nicely together is all part of the coffee-making process. Love Espresso realise that this isn’t everyone’s idea of fun though, so they have a selection of ‘how to’ videos on their website, including this one, which goes through the process of using the grinder and machine for the first time. Each of their coffee blends comes with guidance for the optimum settings for the grinder, which helps speed up the process of pouring the perfect shot.
We originally thought it would be a great idea to run a blind taste test comparing coffee made with the Rocket machine and our Gaggia to see if we could tell the difference. However, the process turned out to be more complicated than we expected. Each machine required different grind settings and pulling shots from two machines at the same time to ensure a fair comparison proved difficult.
Although the taste test itself didn’t go as planned, one thing became very clear: the Rocket machine delivered impressive consistency. We were able to pull high-quality shots repeatedly, each with excellent flavour and the rich mouthfeel that makes a great espresso such a pleasure to drink. In addition, switching from brewing espresso to steaming milk was seamless, without the temperature-surfing challenges that Gaggia owners are likely familiar with.
Ultimately, Team Gravel Union aren’t pro-level baristas and our testing expertise definitely falls more neatly into the gravel bikes and cycling kit category than it does coffee machines. But the fact that we could make consistently high-quality coffee, in many different forms, in a relatively short space of time says a lot about the quality of Rocket’s machines and the great choices that Love Espresso have made when it comes to their coffee bean blends.
Only you can decide how important coffee is in your life as a gravel rider and, therefore how much budget you can justify allocating to it. Owning a high-end set-up like this one from Rocket involves a significant financial outlay. With Love Espresso’s monthly subscription service, the up-front cost is dramatically reduced, yet it provides top quality equipment, beans and service, meaning you should be able to pour consistently fantastic coffee for the foreseeable future!
If you would like to find out more about Love Espresso, head over to their website.