• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Coffee Review

The World's Leading Coffee Guide

Advanced Search

  • Reviews
    • Latest Reviews
    • Top-Rated (94+)
    • Espressos
    • Best Values
    • Top 30 Coffees of 2021
    • Taiwan Coffees – 台灣送評的咖啡豆
    • Pods and Capsules
    • Reviews by U.S. City
    • Green/Unroasted
    • Advanced Search
  • Reports
    • Latest Reports
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia-Pacific
    • Espressos
    • Annual Top 30
    • Processing Method
    • Social/Environmental
    • Tree Variety
    • Blends
  • Equipment
    • The New Fellow Ode Brew Grinder
    • Mid-Range Burr Coffee Grinders
    • Electric Gooseneck Kettles
    • Interpreting Equipment Ratings
  • Journal
    • 2022 Editorial Calendar
    • How Coffee Review Works
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Kenneth Davids
    • Our Team
    • Our Advertisers
    • Our Sponsors
    • Learn
      • Interpreting Coffee Reviews
      • Reference
      • Glossary
    • Contact Us
  • Trade
    • 2022 Editorial Calendar
    • Becoming an Advertiser
    • Campaign Package Deals
    • Getting Coffees Reviewed
    • Quoting Reviews
    • Award Certificates
    • Media Kit
  • 中文 – Chinese
    • 評介和獎章宣傳使用條款
    • 台灣送評的咖啡豆
    • 如何將您的咖啡送評
    • “行銷攻略” 促銷活動
  • Members
    • WHY BECOME A MEMBER?
    • Member Benefits
    • Our Sponsors
    • Programs and Initiatives
    • Member Support

Shop for top-rated coffees at Durango Coffee Company

Shop for No. 1 coffee of 2021 at Paradise Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Amavida Coffee Roasters

Shop for Top-rated coffees at Barrington Coffee Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Kakalove in Taiwan

Shop for top-rated coffees at GoCoffeeGo

Shop for No. 15 Coffee of 2020 at Hala Tree Kona Coffee

Shop at Rhetoric Coffee

Shop for 93-point Yemen coffee at Baba Java


Tasting Reports – Most Recent

Coffee Review has published more than 250 monthly coffee tasting reports since February 1997. The most recent tasting reports appear below in reverse chronological order. You may narrow your search by category from the main navigation drop-downs or by using the key word search feature that appears in the page header. The content in tasting reports and associated reviews was correct at the time of publication but may not remain accurate over time.

Brewing Coffee at Home

Single-Origin Espressos 2008

Those new to espresso connoisseurship may be surprised to learn that producing this dense, aromatic beverage from coffee of a single origin rather than from a blend of coffees from different origins is a mildly controversial practice. Traditionalists argue that the espresso system extracts flavor-bearing components from coffee so efficiently that a single coffee from a single origin is not

June 6, 2008
Tasting Report | Reviews

“S” as in Sexy: New Specialty Offerings from Brazil

The fact that at least half of the American roasters submitting coffees for this month's cupping spelled Brazil with an "s" - the Portuguese-Brazilian spelling - may be symptomatic of what has happened of late to the reputation of high-end coffees from that country. The spelling implies that these are not your old-fashioned, low-grown, stolid Brazils of years past, but Brasils with an "s" -

May 1, 2008
Tasting Report | Reviews

Green Coffee Beans on Drying Rack

Special Reserve is Dead. Long Live Special Reserve.

Two or three years ago, offering small, distinctive lots of coffee on a temporary, seasonal basis and calling them "special reserve" or "limited edition" appeared to be one of the most promising trends in specialty coffee. These offerings proposed to wean coffee drinkers from expecting the same kind of consistency in single-origin coffees as they might expect from brands of beer or soft drinks:

April 6, 2008
Tasting Report | Reviews

Decaffeinated Coffees

Decaffeinated Single-Origins: A Slow Tour with Limited Stops

How deep a flavor rut are coffee drinkers stuck in if they give up caffeine? Are they eternally condemned to token decaf blends at the end of the counter, or can they tour the world by cup, or try to save it by cup, like their caffeine-consuming colleagues? Based on this month's cupping of decaffeinated single-origin coffees, options are rather limited when you travel by decaf. A couple of

March 3, 2008
Tasting Report | Reviews

Flag of Colombia

Juan Valdez’s Progeny: Micro-Lot and Other Fine Colombias

This month's cupping of coffees from Colombia confirms that this giant among coffee producers has successfully turned at least a portion of its industry from supplier of immense quantities of good-but-not-great generic "100% Colombian" coffee to prized source of smaller (sometimes tiny) lots of subtly distinctive specialty coffees. Handsome symbol Juan Valdez and his photogenic mule are being

February 5, 2008
Tasting Report | Reviews

Big Bags from the Big Boxes: Value All-Arabicas from the Discount Chains

Those who read Coffee Review regularly may have noticed the appearance of some rather pricy coffees recently, albeit many of them very highly rated and well worth the money for those willing to pop. This month's article heads in an entirely different direction. On behalf of those consumers who nose their carts down the cluttered but austere aisles of national discount chains in pursuit of maximum

January 2, 2008
Tasting Report | Reviews

Asian Palm Civet in Cage

Exotic Procedures in Far Places: Aged, Monsooned and Luwaked Coffees

This month we review two of the world's more exotic coffee types - monsooned coffees from India and aged coffees from Sumatra - together with the novelty kopi luwak, a coffee famously processed via the digestive tract of a coffee-fruit-eating mammal, and, perhaps understandably given the procedures involved, currently the world's most expensive coffee. Monsooned and aged coffees are both

December 3, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Coffee Tasting Report: Straight Coffees from Africa

Berries, Wine and Chocolate (Some of the Time): Dry-Processed Coffees of Ethiopia and Yemen

Dry-processed or "natural" coffees from Yemen and Ethiopia (those coffees dried inside the fruit rather than after the fruit has been removed) are the world's original coffees - and also, in their most recent incarnation, one of the newest trends in coffee. Unfortunately, most of the exotically distinctive coffees I reviewed this month with co-cupper Miguel Meza represent the new trend rather than

November 5, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Traditional Coffees of Central America:

2007 Prize-Winning Coffees from Central America and Colombia

This month we review ten prize winners from green coffee competitions held this year in Central American countries and in Colombia. These competitions, "during which a jury of international cuppers spends several well-caffeinated days slurping, spitting and obsessing over a gradually narrowing group of fine coffees from a given growing country," to quote my own earlier article on the subject (hey,

October 5, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Fair Trade Certified Coffee

Fair-Trade Coffees: The Controversy and the Cup

There are likely to be two categories of reader for this article: Those who know something about Fair Trade coffees (and who probably hold strong opinions on the subject) and those who don't. For those who don't, Fair Trade certification is an assurance from an internationally recognized third-party certifier (in the United States the certifier is TransFair USA) that the green coffees contained

September 4, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Italy Seen from America: Nine (Genuine) Italian and Three American Espressos

Italians must both wonder and cringe when they observe the amazing globe-trotting journey of espresso, a beverage system so quintessentially (and once so exclusively) Italian. Setting aside the implied stereotype that associates Italian-Americans with gangsters, the scene in an early episode of The Sopranos in which Silvio encounters a Starbucks-style espresso bar for the first time and wants to

August 3, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Map of the Caribbean

Caribbean Coffees 2007: Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic

This year's review of coffees from the islands of the Caribbean is notable as much for what isn't here as for what is. Samples of Caribbean coffees were hard to come by this year, even from Jamaica's famous Blue Mountains. And only the tiniest smattering of offerings turned up from Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. This despite all of these islands' long and distinguished coffee

July 3, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Flag of Rwanda

Alternative Africas: Rwanda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe

Most specialty Africa coffees sold in North America are from Ethiopia and Kenya, the two most distinctive coffee origins in the region and arguably in the world. However, coffee is grown in substantial quantities all along the string of mountains and plateaus extending south from Ethiopia and Kenya. Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe all produce interesting, at times

June 4, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Rubusto Coffee in Cup

Low-Acid Options for Coffee Drinkers

The title alone of this article raises a sizable number of questions. For example: What is acidity in coffee? The tart yet sweet sensation that animates the sensory character of the finest coffees and keeps them from falling into woody neutrality? An edgy sourness that messes up our tummies? Prime contributor to coffee's newfound status as the leading contributor to cancer-fighting antioxidant

May 1, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Tasting Report: Coffees from Papua New Guinea, Timor and Java

Sweetness and Earth: Java, Sulawesi, Bali, Timor

One starting point for understanding the intriguing coffees that emerge from the islands of Indonesia (Sumatra, Sulawesi, Java, Bali) and Timor is the prosaic issue of processing, or how the fruit is removed from the coffee seeds and how they are dried. The famous "earthy" character of traditional Sumatra and Sulawesi coffees clearly derives from a peculiar prolonged sequence of drying acts

April 3, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Decaf Espresso shots

Better Than You Think: Decaffeinated Espressos

The term "decaffeinated espresso" gets even more snickers from coffee insiders than do allusions to ordinary decaffeinated coffee. The assumption seems to be that espresso is such a strong intensification of coffee-ness that drinking a decaffeinated version of it is a particularly perverse contradiction. In fact, decaffeination and espresso can be surprisingly well suited to one another. The

March 5, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Red Coffee Cherries

Cupping the Andes: Southern Colombia, Bolivia and Peru

Coffee growing regions strung along the rugged Andes from central Colombia south through Peru have much in common: high growing altitudes; a reliance on sturdy, simple varieties of arabica like typica and caturra; small-holding farmers whose struggle to produce fine coffee is challenged by daunting transportation problems and sporadic social and political conflict. As in so many other places in

February 4, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Empty supermarket aisle

Starting with Cans: Mainstream Supermarket Coffees

True, not all of the coffees reviewed this month came in cans and the term "mainstream" may be ambiguous, but all definitely were purchased retail at supermarkets and most should be available in any large, well-stocked grocery in the United States. All were sold pre-ground with the exception of Eight O'Clock Coffee, the traditional supermarket whole-bean alternative for cost-conscious

January 4, 2007
Tasting Report | Reviews

Competition Coffee Cherries on Limb

Price, Quality and Value: Questioning Competition Coffees

[In the following piece Kevin Knox, at various times coffee buyer for Starbucks and Allegro Coffee and well-known coffee writer, takes a controversial view of the new specialty coffee phenomenon of green coffee competitions and Internet auctions. His comments are aimed at roasting companies and green coffee buyers, but Coffee Review readers and consumer buyers of fine roasted coffees will find his

December 2, 2006
Tasting Report | Reviews

Traditional Coffees of Central America:

Award-Winning Coffees of Central America 2006

For me, the most enjoyable aspect of this sampling of prize winners from Central American green coffee competitions was experiencing the pride and passion of the small North America roasters who purchased these coffees and roasted them. All of the samples arrived impeccably fresh, and with a couple of exceptions all were roasted within the classic full city range, which is to say the roast was

December 2, 2006
Tasting Report | Reviews

  • Go to page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 7
  • Go to page 8
  • Go to page 9
  • Go to page 10
  • Go to page 11
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 15

Primary Sidebar

Shop for top-rated coffees at Durango Coffee Company

Shop for No. 1 coffee of 2021 at Paradise Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Amavida Coffee Roasters

Shop for Top-rated coffees at Barrington Coffee Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Kakalove in Taiwan

Shop for top-rated coffees at GoCoffeeGo

Shop for No. 15 Coffee of 2020 at Hala Tree Kona Coffee

Shop at Rhetoric Coffee

Shop for 93-point Yemen coffee at Baba Java

Become an advertiser

Get Coffees Reviewed

 

Shop for No. 1 coffee of 2021 at Paradise Roasters

Connect with Us

Sign Up for Our Free E-Newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive our free e-mail newsletter
  • Coffee Reviews
  • Tasting Reports
  • Reference
  • Glossary
  • Please Support Our Advertisers
  • Contact Us
  • Journal
  • Kenneth Davids
  • Interpreting Coffee Reviews
  • Roast Definitions
  • Caveats about Coffee Ratings
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Getting Coffees Reviewed
  • Advertising Opportunities
  • Quoting Reviews
  • Copyright
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site Security

Copyright © 2022 Coffee Review. All Rights Reserved.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.