Review: Kuma Coffee Ethiopia Suke Quto (Seattle, Washington)

I had last tried beans from Kuma Coffee back in 2015, not long after I had started this blog. I remember liking their coffee for its fruity, bright notes, but I also remember struggling a bit in my first tasting because I was picking up on a papery taste from the unbleached filter I was […]

Review: Roseline Coffee First Flowers Spring Blend (Portland, Oregon)

Roseline Coffee is one of my favorite roasters to order from when I’m in the mood for something special. I follow them on Instagram and when I saw this coffee pop up on my feed, I knew I had to try it. It’s one of the prettiest bags of coffee I’ve seen in a while, […]

Review: Black Diesel Coffee Guatemala Huehuetenango (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

This is the second bag of coffee I received from Black Diesel Coffee. Black Diesel is a craft coffee company dedicated to quality, community, and coffee education. I haven’t had a chance to visit their shop in person yet (not surprising, since I live in Texas and the global pandemic is still going on!) but […]

Review: Black Diesel Coffee Ethiopia Yirgacheffe (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

I’ve enjoyed drinking coffee for decades, but I still remember the one coffee that changed everything, the one that awakened my senses and introduced me to a world I never knew existed. The coffee was a natural-processed Ethiopian, and I remember marveling at its sweetness, the blueberry aroma, and how much I enjoyed drinking it […]

Review: Simple Beans Guatemala Jovenes (La Jolla, California)

Chocolate lovers, you’re gonna want to check this out! I will sometimes get asked by friends for help with finding a new coffee. For those people that really enjoy chocolaty, nutty, sweet black coffees, I usually think that grabbing a medium-roasted Guatemalan, Brazilian, or Mexican coffee is a good place to start (just check the […]

Review: Drum Coffee Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Banko Gotiti FTO (Missoula, Montana)

I first heard about Drum Coffee via my friend Brandon, a fantastically talented percussionist who happened to stop in at one of their locations while on a road trip. My first reaction to the roaster’s name was, ha, nice pun (since I figured they use a drum roaster to roast their coffee beans). But on […]

Review: Kona Roasted Coffee 100% Hilo (Kona, Hawaii)

Hilo is located on the northeastern end of the big island of Hawaii, and this area experiences one of the highest levels of rainfall of anywhere in the world (around 300 days a year), which makes growing coffee a challenge. The resulting crop is small and rare; this will never be a coffee that will […]

Review: Kona Roasted Coffee Gary & Valerie 100% Kona (Kona, Hawaii)

This offering from Kona Roasted is named for Gary and Valerie, the farmers of this varietal. Gary and Valerie moved from California to Hawaii in 2005 and, with the knowledge they’ve built over the past fifteen years of coffee farming, have cultivated a crop that earned a 92 from Coffee Review in 2020! Whole bean: […]

Review: Kona Roasted Coffee Salvador 100% Kona (Kona, Hawaii)

I’ve had this blog for roughly five years, and I go through phases where I am really active, writing a lot of reviews, and also phases where I go quiet. Around about December of 2019, I started getting a little overwhelmed with life and I somewhat unintentionally took a hiatus from coffee reviews – I […]

Review: Blue Bottle Coffee Summer Blend (Oakland, California)

Blue Bottle Coffee offers seasonal blends, and I was fortunate enough to pick up a bag of their Summer Blend while it was still available. I first was alerted about this blend through Blue Bottle’s email list, where Blue Bottle’s quality control director, Ben Brewer (really? Is there a more spot-on surname for someone working […]