Union Brew Lab
Closed. It served its last customers on Wednesday 28 February 2024, after twelve years, and the unit on South College Street now trades as Origin Coffee.
Why go
Dave Law and Tom Hyde were both 26 when they opened it in 2012, four years after they started working on it. Hyde had run the wine department at Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh until shortly before the doors opened. They bought a Slayer espresso machine, hand-built and shipped from Seattle, one of three then in the United Kingdom, and Hyde priced it plainly: It costs about the same as a smallish car.
4
The Scotsman called the third-wave format a first for Scotland
when it opened.4 The format was a brew bar with three methods on the counter: Order a coffee in this venue and you can have it made in the Slayer, by Syphon, or Chemex.
4 The founding roaster was Has Bean in Stafford, who cut them a bespoke espresso from Kenyan Karatina AA grown by a co-operative of 1,400 farmers in Mathira. Dave Law told The Scotsman what he asked for and what came back: They asked us for a three-word brief and we gave them a much longer one... So, they're biscuity, nutty, caramely and full-bodied, but also sherbety, citrusy and dynamic. We had an epiphanous moment when we tried them.
4
By the time Charlie Ellis measured it in 2023 it was going through up to 35 kilos of beans a week, and in his words it quickly became Scotland's largest speciality coffee shop.
3
In May 2017 it started trading into the evening, to 9pm Wednesday through Sunday, in what SLTN called what is claimed to be Scotland's first 'coffee bar'
.7 The list that came with it was a Scottish supplier roll-call: a Nitro Cold Brew Martini, natural wine from Henri, beer from Pilot, spirits from Arbikie, cheese from I.J. Mellis and charcuterie from East Coast Cured, of which SLTN says Brew Lab is said to be the first stockist. In January 2018 Union Hand-Roasted Coffee of east London bought the business outright and kept both founders, putting them in charge of the group's cafe and cold-brew operations.8 That is where the Union in the name came from.
Order this / avoid
- Order: nothing. This is a closure record.
- What to have ordered: the nitro cold brew. It is the drink the Independent Coffee Guide's own team named the place for.5
- Avoid: walking to South College Street expecting it. A Cornish roaster has the unit now.10
What locals & experts say
- The Independent Coffee Guide team, picking for The Scotsman (2017), wrote the sharpest line anyone published about what came out of this counter:
Caffeine fiends flock to this slick coffee emporium for the nitro: a cold brew concoction infused with nitrogen gas to create a wickedly creamy and incredibly smooth mouthfeel. Regulars return for the comprehensive collection of coffees from guest roasters such as The Barn and La Cabra, expertly crafted by the talented team of baristas.
5 - Charlie Ellis, The Edinburgh Reporter (2023), set the room in Edinburgh's wider scene and was careful about where it sat in it:
It's no coincidence that most of the very best places in Edinburgh for specialty coffee are run by very small teams (such as Source), as this aids consistency.
He closed on the same note, that the training courses revealwhy the number of truly excellent places in the city still remains limited.
3 He writes for a local news site that does not review restaurants or cafes. - On the last day, the same writer found it
teeming, with hardly a seat to be had.
2 - Independent Coffee Guide Scotland, sixth edition, 2022: one of seven Edinburgh entries out of more than 120 across the UK, on stated criteria of coffee expertise and the quality of the beans.6
Good to know
- Status: closed since 28 February 2024. Plenty of listings still show it open, so check before anyone walks over.1
- Go here instead: Lowdown Coffee on George Street, which the Independent Coffee Guide's own team picked alongside this one in 2017 and which is still trading.5 Charlie Ellis names Source as one of the small teams pouring the city's best cups.3
- What is there now: Origin Coffee, the Cornish roaster, at the same 6-8 South College Street address, registered with the council on 2 July 2024.10
- The name: it traded as Brew Lab from 2012 and as Union Brew Lab after the January 2018 acquisition, with the longer form in press use by November 2019. The closure notice went out under the short one.
- Hygiene: no register record exists under either trading name, and none is claimed. The only registration at the address belongs to the successor.10
- Opened: Thursday 27 September 2012. The Scotsman interviewed the founders on Monday 24 September and the piece signs off saying the shop opens on the Thursday.4
- What the training lab did: the manager, Fraser Ballantyne, dialled the grinder in every morning, which took up to twenty minutes even for an experienced barista, then re-adjusted through the day as temperature and humidity moved. His stated target was every shot landing in the servable window.3
Verdict
listed — The door shut on Wednesday 28 February 2024 and nobody can be sent here, so the ladder has one honest rung, the one Aizle and Chancho took in this city. The record earns the pin outright. Dave Law and Tom Hyde were both 26 when they opened it in September 2012 after four years of work, on a hand-built Slayer shipped from Seattle that was one of three in the UK, and they ran a real brew bar where the same coffee came off the machine, through a halogen syphon in 90 seconds, or as a Chemex in three and a half minutes, on a Kenyan Karatina AA that Has Bean roasted to their written brief from a 1,400-farmer co-op in Mathira. The Scotsman called the format a first for Scotland in 2012, and SLTN recorded a second firstness in May 2017 when it began trading to 9pm with a Nitro Cold Brew Martini and a Scottish supplier list. Union Hand-Roasted bought the business outright in January 2018 and put both founders over the group's cafe and cold-brew operations, and by 2023 it was going through up to 35 kilos of beans a week with a training lab underneath it. The Independent Coffee Guide's own team picked it for The Scotsman in 2017 and the guide listed it again in the 2022 sixth edition, while the one writer who assessed it at length put it in the city's mainstream tier and put the best cups in smaller hands. Origin Coffee of Cornwall took the unit, which is what the market itself made of the address.