Organization: Flavia Beverage Systems, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Coffee: Sidamo Gold (filterpack)
Reviewed: January 2004
Overall Rating: 80 points
Aroma: 6
Acidity: 7
Body: 6
Flavor: 6
Aftertaste: 5
Roast (Agtron): Medium-Dark (0/47)
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Origin: Presumably, Sidamo Province, southern Ethiopia

Notes: This coffee is packaged in a proprietary filterpack for the Flavia SB100 single serve brewer. Ethiopia Sidamo is one of the world's most distinctive coffee origins, but here its usual sweet lemon and heady floral notes are disturbingly flat. Flavia ("The Cafe of Choice") is a brand of Mars Incorporated, a large privately owned company that started with its now classic candies before adding pet food (Whiskas), people food (Uncle Ben's) and vending systems, including the SB100 home single-serve brewer. Visit www.flavia.net or call 800-882-6629 for more info.

Blind Assessment: The aroma is full and round with pleasant if rather shallow lemon and floral notes. In the cup a woody bitterness obliterates the floral notes and turns the lemon tones pithy and hard. The finish is both bitter and astringent.

Who should drink it: Those who slow down on freeways to gawk at accidents. For an aficionado there is a macabre fascination in tasting a coffee that comes across as a parody of itself.

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