Behind the Blend: Roamers Roast with Bad Hand Coffee

For some people, a coffee is a means to an end to get that morning caffeine hit. For others, it’s an art, a science, and a life obsession. Wherever you sit on the scale of love for the black stuff, there’s always an interesting story to be told behind a great speciality coffee roaster.

So we sat down with the guys behind Bad Hand Coffee, a roastery and coffee shop local to us down on the South Coast, to chat all things coffee, morning rituals, and brewing a cup of the good stuff outdoors. And on that note… it just so happens we’ve brewed up something special with the folk at Bad Hand and we bring you - Roamers Roast. More on that later, but for now, pour yourself a cup and read on.

Bad Hand Coffee was born out of curiosity and obsession. It all started when Joel opened Boscanova in 2007, and later South Coast Roast. Once you start making and exploring speciality coffees, it’s not long until you fall down the rabbit hole.

Eventually, Joel got a little roaster that he installed in his conservatory at home in 2012, and that’s where things started taking a different turn. Turns out, we got pretty good at roasting coffee, and in 2014 we moved the roaster to a space underneath the Hilton hotel and started roasting properly for our cafes. Roll forward to today, and we no longer have those cafes, but we’re holed up in our Victorian warehouse, which we’ve been restoring since 2016, up in the Triangle in Bournemouth, with a bunch of other creatives and makers who share our space.

As for the name, when Joel was working abroad he met an indigenous American named Bad Hand, thought it was the coolest name he’d ever heard, but missed the opportunity to use it for any of his children, so the company got it instead.

First things first, we’re sourcing the best coffees possible, and we measure that on flavour as well as the ethics behind how it’s grown. It can be a difficult area to gain full transparency on, but we work exclusively with responsible import partners to try and gain as much clarity as we can, and make sure the people doing all the hard work are being looked after, and the environment they live in too. There’s a footprint to everything we do, but we are working constantly to make sure it’s as small as possible. From having our second solar array installed at the warehouse, to delivering in reusable tubs, by second-hand electric van. It’s important to us.

It happens to you before you know it. It’s something a lot of us swig back on every morning, and there’s absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t always be super delicious. For a long time, there was an awful lot of ropey coffee being drunk in the UK. We’ve had a few waves of speciality coffee interest lap up over the past fifteen or so years, and thankfully, the coffee scene in the UK is in much stronger shape than it once was. But… there’s still coffees that come through that can absolutely blow you away. Even when you think you’ve tried them all, a coffee will come along that gets you all excited again. I guess that’s the brilliant consequence of working with a natural product.

We’ve brought together coffees for this one to deliver a real crowd pleaser. We wanted it to work for anyone, no matter what brew gear you are working with or how you take it. So if you’re running it through a home espresso machine, or making an impromptu filter in the woods mid-bike ride - you’re going to get a banging cup.

It’s a blend of coffees from Brazil, El Salvador and Kenya and together they give a really great balance of sweet, milk chocolatey notes, and a gentle fruity sweetness. It’s got a proper lip-smacking finish to it too, so you have a long, lingering aftertaste, all smooth and syrupy – we’re brewing it up in the staff pot quite a lot at the minute.

It’s whatever works for you really isn’t it, and there’s a certain romance, a kind of mindfulness in brewing outdoors. Just having the time to sit and hand-grind your coffee in the middle of a field is the best bit.

You can’t really go wrong with an Aeropress. They pack down small, and they leave you virtually no mess (or wet bits to pack away). You can even get a metal filter so you don’t need papers. We’re also a fan of collapsible pourovers, for when you’re really tight on space. Sometimes we’ll brew these straight into an insulated flask so there’s ‘one for now and one for later’.

We’re lucky to live down here in Dorset. We’ve got access to so much nature and outdoor space, and as a team we’re super outdoorsy people, so to us, days spent outdoors are the sign of quality time off, whether that’s just a few hours walking in the Purbecks or the New Forest, or a weekend camping with the family.

But sometimes you just have to take it where you can get it. You might see us nipping down to the beach before work for a quick 5 minute sea dip (or after work for the roasters in the summer to cool down!) and that really clears the mind. Or maybe it’s just taking our lunch breaks up on the roof in the fresh air, away from the phones and laptops. It all adds up.

But it’d be crazy if we didn’t point out the whole ritual of a morning coffee. Whether it’s sitting in the garden watching the grasses blow in the wind, or sitting bleary-eyed looking through a rain-spattered kitchen window - me this morning - it’s the few minutes we can carve out to slow down a second. Finding ways to do those little things as often as possible is so important, as ultimately it pays back in dividends.

This one might cause a fight in the roastery, because there’s definitely not a one size fits all answer, but it’s definitely a proper pastry. It has to be. Whether that’s a morning bun from Bakehouse24, a pain suisse from M’s Bakery, or an almond croissant from Big Wigs - that’s the real question…

If Nick gets in first then he’s always tearing into things like I’m Every Woman by Chaka Khan, which can have a very limited window before it loses its novelty for everyone else. But we span all the genres here; punk, hardcore, folk and classic rock are the mainstays. Wooden Shjips and Slomosa get a lot of airtime, but we have the occasional 90s pop and dance hits moments when we’re feeling nostalgic. Nothing like a bit of Spice Girls to keep the motivation up.

We are currently supporting Half Time, which is an organisation helping the street homeless and vulnerable in our community. We try to keep our support as local as possible, and these guys are addressing very real problems right on our doorstep in the Triangle. They are paving the way for people to get off the streets and improve their situations. We have supported them for a long time through raffles, donations from bag sales, and also our tips at online checkout.

We also like to support Circular11, a Christchurch-based company tackling plastic recycling, with beach and town centre cleans in Bournemouth. Keep your eyes peeled for the next one - we all have coffee at the roastery before and afterwards.

Stay in the know with all things Bad Hand on Instagram, where the guys share news of their latest roasts, roastery goings on, and the occasional latte art competition, naturally.