I almost never buy “holiday blends,” but this bag was a nice surprise at a Whole Foods location in Phoenix during the Christmas holidays. Impressively, it was only 4 days off roast when I bought it! That’s exceptionally fresh coffee for retail, especially considering that the nearest Stumptown roasting facility is in Los Angeles. I […]
French Press
Review: Blue Bottle Kenya Embu Gikirima (Oakland, California)
Technically, I purchased this coffee at the end of 2016 and wrote up notes on it very soon after purchase, but I wanted to save the review to start the new year off with a bang, and Blue Bottle seemed like a good roaster to start this blog off on the right foot in 2017! […]
Review: Batdorf and Bronson Kenya AA Gatumbi (Atlanta, Georgia)
This is the second of two bags I picked up from the Batdorf and Bronson cafe in Atlanta (the first was their excellent Dancing Goats Blend). I’m always intrigued by Kenyan coffees as no two of them have ever been quite the same, so I was curious what awaited me in this bag. Whole bean: […]
Review: Chromatic Coffee Voyager Blend (San Jose, California)
Most of the time, when I buy coffee, I buy coffee that I haven’t tried before, so that I have stuff to write about for this blog. However, every now and then I’ll buy an old favorite, just to have an opportunity to simply enjoy the coffee without over-analyzing it. It’s sort of like when […]
Review: MauiGrown Coffee Maui Mokka (Hawai’i)
This is the second of two varieties of coffee that one of my students brought me from Hawai’i (the other was the MauiGrown 100% Kona I wrote about last week). Unlike the Kona, which came in a blue opaque bag, the Maui Mokka came in a bag which had a clear front to it, so […]
Review: The Missing Bean Unbirthday Blend (Oxford, England)
This tasting is a direct result of me getting to spend a little over a week in a dream destination for me (England) so though I’m going to remain as objective as possible about the coffee, I can’t help but smile when I think about just about everything related to this journey. Rose-colored glasses alert ahead! […]
Review: Caffe Vita East Timor Hatuhei (Seattle, Washington)
On my recent trip to New York City, I told myself that I needed to limit my coffee purchasing to just two bags of coffee, and they needed to both be roasters which were new to me. Birch Coffee’s Emma Espresso was the first, and this bag from Caffe Vita is the other. Now, I’ve […]
Review: Madcap Coffee Roasters Ecuador Pepe Azul (Grand Rapids, Michigan)
I’ve been wanting to try Madcap Coffee for a long time. I’ve seen their name mentioned in multiple “best of” lists over the years, I like their logo, and I like the fact that they’re based in Michigan (as I have fond memories of my time in that state for graduate school). All of the […]
Review: Roseline Coffee Colombia San Jose de Inza (Portland, Oregon)
Since I had just reviewed a Colombian coffee from Cultivar, I wasn’t intending to pick up another Colombian coffee for a while, but on a recent visit to Houndstooth, this was the freshest coffee available, so I acquiesced. There are worse things in life than repeating an origin two weeks in a row! Whole bean: cocoa […]
Review: Cultivar Coffee Colombia Henry Serrato (Dallas, Texas)
The last time I reviewed a coffee from Cultivar, it landed in my Best of 2015 list. I happened to be visiting Emporium Pies in McKinney, Texas one weekend and they had fresh bags of this Colombia Henry Serrato on the shelves, so I decided that the time was right to give Cultivar another go. […]