For July I dipped into my storage boxes and found a bottle of the unusually name Roasted Red from Beaufort Inks.
The story behind my acquisition of this unusually named ink is simple; some time ago I came across this ink when buying a replacement nib for my Kaweco Dia2 and I ended up buying four of the inks in their range. Beaufort Inks sell a range of nibs, inks and components for making your own pens and it’s always a pleasure speaking to Phil who is very knowledgeable about all things pen related.
So, this is the first of the Beaufort Inks I am reviewing and I’m very pleased with it; at £8.35GBP for 45ml it’s quite reasonably priced especially when you consider it comes in a nice round Italian crystal bottle.
However, the ink left me with mixed feelings when I did the Q-Tip test, the stripes came out as a better representation of the ink colour than the swab test, but the swab test does reveal that the ink is definitely a red ink with no underlying colours.
For the writing test I used a dip pen with a conventional nib and feed from which the ink flowed evenly and showed itself to be well saturated and a little on the wet side taking around 32 seconds to dry completely.
The final colour of the ink is a strong red bordering on maroon; not wholly dissimilar to Montegrappa’s Gryffindor Red and would make an excellent substitute for Gryffindor Red for considerably less pennies.
All in all, this is a very nice daily use red; it is nice strong colour without being too bright so I if you’re shopping for a red ink but want something a little different then add this one to your list to consider.
Disclaimer: The ink was purchased with my own funds at retail price. The opinions expressed in this review are my own; and I am not connected with either the retailers or manufacturers in any way.
The Indian Marmalade Company 
The terracotta shading on this looks quite appealing. I’d heard of Beaufort before, and wondered why I’d not pulled the trigger on their products, so I went a-looking. A bottle of their ink ex-VAT for overseas is a very reasonable £6.96, but then there’s £13.45 in shipping! Compared to the £3.99 from Pure Pens for shipping similar goods, that’s a hard no I’m afraid. Couldn’t even see any relief for a minimum order value. I had a similar issue buying the relaunched Blackbird ink… the shipping is crippling from the UK, and the lack of overseas distributers is hurting exposure to a receptive market.
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It’s a lovely ink but as you say the shipping is expensive, I’ve bought Blackbird inks and they are nice colours but their online shop was very disorganised when I placed my order and if I recall correctly the shipping inside the UK wasn’t cheap. Cult Pens, from what I have read, are pretty good on overseas shipping costs but despite their large inventory they don’t carry everything.
If there are a few things you want from this side of the pond email me and I can assemble them for you and that would reduce the shipping costs.
Best wishes
Charlie
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