Ground coffee · 5 min readTaylors of Harrogate Hot Lava Java review
The darkest thing Taylors make, rated 6 out of 6 on their own scale, and the only blend in the range they admit contains robusta. Six 200g bags, 40p a cup.
This is a coffee with a specific job and no interest in being liked by everyone. Taylors put Hot Lava Java at the top of their own roast scale, describe it as extra dark with hints of smoke and black pepper, and say plainly that it is not all arabica: they add robusta for the caffeine. The grind is Taylors' versatile medium, aimed at filter and cafetière rather than espresso. At 40p a cup it sits right on the ground median, and the 1.2kg pack comes as six 200g bags, which for a roast this dark is the most important thing about the packaging.
Taylors at the top of their own roast scale: extra dark, smoky, robusta-boosted, on a filter and cafetière grind at 40p a cup.
- Tastes
- Extra dark, smoky, black pepper
- Strength
- Very strong
- Best for
- Strong black filter and cafetière
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 3/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 2/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 2/5
Buy it ifYou want the darkest, smokiest cup a mainstream British roaster makes.
Skip it ifYou are buying one bag for a household with mixed tastes; a roast 6 divides people.
Live prices, sizes and retailers for this coffee sit on its product page. This review is the analysis alongside it. See prices →
The darkest thing Taylors make
Taylors run their own roast scale from 1 to 6 and Hot Lava Java sits at 6, labelled Dark and Smoky. Their published description is an extra dark roast with hints of smoke and black pepper, and the character is credited primarily to Indonesian-grown beans with India and Brazil in supporting roles. Indonesian coffee is a sensible foundation for this style: it is low in acidity, heavy in body and it takes a dark roast without falling apart.
Understand what a roast 6 means before you buy. At that level the roast is a bigger contributor to the cup than the origin is, which is why the notes are smoke and pepper rather than fruit or florals. That is a design choice, not a shortcut. It just means the beans underneath are doing less of the talking than they would at a lighter roast.
| Specification | What Taylors publish |
|---|---|
| Roast | 6 of 6 on Taylors' own scale, extra dark |
| Lead origin | Indonesia |
| Supporting origins | India and Brazil |
| Bean mix | Mostly arabica, with robusta added |
| Published notes | Smoke and black pepper |
| Grind cut for | Filter and cafetière |
| Pack | 1.2kg, as six 200g bags, about 66 cups |
| Cost | £0.40 per 18g cup |
The robusta question
Taylors are unusually direct about this, and it is worth quoting the substance of it: unusually for Taylors, this blend does not consist entirely of arabica, and they have included high quality robusta to give it an extra hit of caffeine. Robusta carries roughly double the caffeine of arabica, so that is a real functional claim rather than a marketing flourish.
Be aware that some retail listings for the Hot Lava Java line describe it as 100% arabica. Taylors' own product page says otherwise, and where a roaster and a retailer disagree the roaster is the source that counts. If robusta is something you avoid, this blend is not for you regardless of what a shopping listing says.
Six bags, not one sack
The 1.2kg is six 200g bags, and for this coffee specifically that is the right call rather than a marketing convenience. Dark roasts go stale fastest. The roast drives off moisture and cracks the bean structure open, so there is more surface for oxygen to attack and more volatile aromatic material sitting near the outside of every particle. Grind that and you have accelerated the process again.
Taylors recommend using their ground coffee within two weeks of opening. A 200g bag is about eleven cups on our standard dose, so at two cups a day it is gone inside a week. That is a packaging decision which actually lines up with the storage advice, and it is not something you can say about every kilo bag on the shelf.
Ground coffee has no useful shelf life once air reaches it, whatever the best-before date says. Small bags, an airtight tin and a cool dark cupboard do more for the cup than any upgrade you can buy at this price.
The grind: filter and cafetière, not espresso
Taylors grind their retail coffee to a versatile medium consistency aimed at the two brewing methods most British kitchens actually own. Their own grinding guidance is coarse for a cafetière and medium for filter, and the pre-ground packs land between those, which is a sensible compromise if you use both. Their cafetière recipe is one tablespoon per mug, four minutes, then plunge.
| Brewer | How it goes |
|---|---|
| Filter machine | The best fit. Even drip, clean cup. |
| Cafetière | Good, slightly finer than ideal. Plunge slowly. |
| Aeropress | Fine, and it suits the dark roast. |
| Moka pot | Too coarse to be at its best. Thin for the style. |
| Espresso machine | No. Wrong grind, and the roast is already at the limit. |
What buyers consistently report
- Nobody says it is weak. Strong, bold and deep are the words that recur, which is the coffee doing what it says.
- Smooth appears surprisingly often alongside strong, suggesting the dark roast lands the right side of harsh for most people.
- The burnt, smoky aroma is noticed by everyone and is the thing that decides opinion; it is intentional and it is also the reason some people bounce off it.
- Freshness matters visibly here. Reports are markedly better from people describing a recently opened bag.
That last point is the practical takeaway. A dark roast that has been open a month is not the same coffee as a dark roast opened yesterday, and the gap is wider than it is for a medium roast.
Who should skip it
Anyone buying one bag for a shared kitchen. A roast at the top of the scale is the least safe group choice available, and if half the household wanted something smooth and nutty you have bought the wrong 1.2kg. Skip it if you avoid robusta, because Taylors say it is in there. Skip it if you drink your coffee pale and sweet, where the smoke and pepper that constitute the whole point get buried under milk.
On price, 40p a cup puts it exactly on the roughly 40p a cup our ground catalogue clusters around, so this is neither a bargain nor a stretch. You are paying a fair market rate for a well-made, deliberately extreme coffee, which is the right way for a coffee like this to be priced.
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