The Ka’u district of Hawaii is the largest and southernmost district of the Big Island, with the North and South Kona districts bordering it to the west. Coffee from Hawaii (Kona coffee in particular) is world-famous for its smooth, sweet flavor profile, but it’s rare to see 100% Kona coffee being sold, as it fetches […]
North America
Review: Turntable Lab Coffee for Records Blend 1 (Brooklyn, New York)
I’ve never visited the physical Turntable Lab location in Brooklyn, but I’ve shopped on their website a few times for records and accessories. While browsing their merch tab, I happened to see that they offer coffee, and it intrigued me enough to buy their Blend 1, which is a medium roast coffee from Oaxaca, Mexico. […]
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: Plantation Blue 100% Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee (Pembroke Pines, Florida)
I’ve had limited experience with Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. The first time I tried it was at a DFW-area coffee shop called Buon Giorno Coffee, and I believe I paid $8 for a single french press of the Jamaica Blue Mountain beans they had available that day. I remember feeling like it was a LOT […]
Review: Blue Bottle Coffee California Good Land Organics Gesha Blend (Oakland, California)
While I’ll be writing this post up like a normal coffee review, this really feels like a bit of a historical event due to the beans themselves. First off, this is going to be a giant tease of sorts because this coffee was available for a very short window of time in December and that […]
Review: Weekend Coffee Roasters Mexico Organic Altura Finca San Carlos (San Jose, California)
I was recently contacted by the nice people at Weekend Coffee Company, based out of Northern California. I like that they’re a family-owned company, and they received the “Editors Choice” award in the 2017 Metro “Best of Silicon Valley” issue. At this time, they’re an online-only business (they don’t operate a storefront/brick-and-mortar coffee shop), but […]
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: MauiGrown Coffee Company 100% Kona (Hawai’i)
Hawai’i is the only state in the USA that grows coffee, and Kona coffee in particular has a reputation for being both very mild in flavor and very expensive. It’s hard to get your hands on 100% Kona coffee on the mainland; finding blends is much more common. Certain roasters do offer fresh-roasted Kona beans […]