Inside Southampton's thriving coffee culture across the city

A taxi driver asked me: ‘Why isn’t Southampton considered cool, like Manchester or Bristol?’

He then listed his criteria for a cool city, all of which Southampton meets - live music, theatre, a (mostly) Premier League football team, artists and galleries, universities, bookshops, street markets, independent restaurants, craft beer, and good coffee. On this last point, he expanded: ‘Did you know there are five coffee roasting businesses in the city?’

I didn’t, but he’d piqued my interest. Before long, I found myself on a caffeine-powered cross-city adventure that took me from the docks to the Eastern edge of the city, then back to my kitchen where I attempted to roast my own beans.

The tour began at Seadog, Hoxton Bakehouse’s in-house coffee brand. Hoxton have cafés across the county, but on Saturday mornings you can buy direct from the bakery and roastery in Millbrook. With cranes and containers nearby, it has an unexpected industrial charm and I like it as a place to sit and start the weekend, people-watching with a Lyburn cheese bun and a flat white. There’s a steady stream of customers, from dock workers and dog walkers to cyclists en route to the New Forest, and people popping in to pick up a pastry, loaf, and coffee to enjoy at home.

Mozzo's Grant and Marceline from Rebuilding Women's Hope, at the site of the original clinic on Idjwi Island On the other side of the road is Mozzo, Southampton’s largest coffee roaster. You can be forgiven for not knowing the name as they don’t operate any cafés of their own, preferring to supply roasted beans to businesses as a wholesaler, plus direct to the public online. Mozzo’s founder, Grant Lang, showed me the impressive roasting kit and barista training kitchen, which was a far cry from the company’s origins selling coffee from a tuk tuk. Grant explained that with such an international supply chain, coffee has great potential to improve the lives of so many people across the planet. Making a positive difference has always been important to Mozzo and through their Community2Community Fund they support the communities who supply their beans. The fund’s biggest success is building a hospital in Idjwi Island, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with local activist Marceline Budza and her Rebuild Women’s Hope organisation. Grant concluded by saying, ‘We want people to like how our coffee tastes, and like how we do what we do.’

Ascapart roaster Wilson Law. IMAGE: Ascapart Coffee After leaving Mozzo, I visited Ascapart Coffee. This is Mettricks’ in-house coffee roastery, based in their popular Portswood café building along with their Ascapart Beer brewery. Ascapart’s roaster, Wai Shing 'Wilson Law’, was busy preparing coffee for the new Lyndhurst Mettricks, yet found the time to share his knowledge with me. I sniffed beans from Peru, Ethiopia, and Colombia, while Wilson explained the difference in aroma and flavour is not just due to the roasting, but reflective of the bean’s growing conditions. He considers his job is to bring the best out of those individual characteristics. Wilson’s career has taken him from Hong Kong to Southampton, via many points in-between and he told me, ‘Coffee is an opportunity to meet different people.’ Certainly, he enjoys the opportunity to work with Mettricks’ baristas and brewers - even roasting coffee for Ascapart’s Kimber Stout.

SORoast started out as a hobby for Simeon, David and Ben Across the Itchen, SORoast are part of the community of shops on Bitterne Park Triangle, and you can sit and enjoy speciality coffee mere metres from the roasting machine. Chat with the roasters and their love for exploring the wide world of coffee quickly becomes apparent. Indeed, during my conversation with David Foskett, one of the directors, he described the very existence of the company as ‘a passion project that’s gotten wildly out of control!’

David, his co-directors Ben Fishlock and Simeon Kent, and their team, all have other careers. The business started as a hobby, with David and Ben seeking out interesting coffee from around the world and roasting it in a small machine at home. It grew quickly, first supplying friends and family, then a community veg stall set up to fill the void after Bitterne Park’s much-loved greengrocer closed. A couple of years ago, a shop on the Triangle became available, so they moved in.

David explained, ‘We want to be embedded in the life of the Triangle. For us, the fun of coffee is knowing where it’s come from, the altitude it was grown at, what has happened to that coffee since it’s come off the bush, and how these flavours have been created. Being able to share that with people is kind of magic.’

For my next stop, I stretched my definition of Southampton’s cityDeveroast is owned by Pete Devereux, one half of music legends The Artful Dodger. IMAGE: Jonathan Bean limits. I could have thrown my net even wider and visited other Hampshire roasters, but Deveroast in Botley is unapologetically included because: A) founder Pete Devereux is a Southampton music legend; and B) it was from his Bitterne Park neighbour, SORoast’s Ben, that he first got the coffee roasting bug.

When you walk into Deveroast, you can see subtle references to Pete’s career, as one half (with Mark Hill) of The Artful Dodger music production duo, including a turntable with a collection of vinyl records. But the chances are your eyes are first going to be drawn to the roasting machine sat in the middle of the building, intentionally highlighting the connection between the raw beans sat in sacks nearby and the coffee in your cup.

Deveroast can be found on the edge of the river Hamble. IMAGE: Jonathan Bean Pete told me he never thought he’d get into the coffee business, but having started roasting at home, the Covid lockdowns gave him time to reflect. Deveroast is the result: ‘I wanted to create a space where people can come, put some music on, enjoy their coffee, and have a conversation. It’s a hub, and a bit like the old record shop or barber shop culture, where you walk in, end up having a chat with like-minded people and discover something new.’

Indeed, I discovered a lot about coffee from all the conversations I had and felt inspired to have a go at roasting myself. With a handful of green coffee beans and a frying pan, my home set-up was rudimentary, yet the resulting coffee wasn’t too bad. I found myself thinking about how it could be improved, could start to see a whole new world of coffee roasting exploration opening up before me, and realised ‘this is how it begins…’

It’ll be a long journey, and I don’t think I’ll ever reach DIY roasting perfection, but fortunately there are more than enough expert roasters in Southampton to keep my cup full until I do.