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We have published thousands of coffee reviews and espresso reviews since 1997. The reviews below appear in reverse chronological order by review date. Older reviews may no longer accurately reflect current versions of the same coffee. To search for a specific roaster, origin or coffee use the Advanced Search Function.
A sweet, fruity Peru that suffers from musty, mildewed tones. The mild musty influence turns the fruit and floral notes pungent, dry, and bittersweet. Pleasantly so, aside from the rather heavy finish.
Low-key, mild, balanced to a fault. Sweet, with the round richness of a good Viennese blend, but ultimately unexpressive and rather inert.
A low-toned but resonant, agreeable blend, crisp with tart, berry-toned fruit. Rather lean-bodied but rich in impression. The finish is sweet and balanced.
Medium-bodied, sweet, with the typical wild, slightly fermented Yemen fruit tones, in this case suggesting overripe cherry, apricot, and melon. In the finish the fruit ferment reads as a sort of brandied, bittersweet chocolate. A slight astringency in the finish suggests that during storage this coffee faded a bit, as Yemens quickly do.
Delicate and soft, with a tart sweetness suggesting Meyer lemon. Supple, smooth, elegant.
The softer style of Kenya: sweet, flirty, utterly seductive, but with a gently acidy backbone. In the aroma crisp temperate fruit tones, apple or pear perhaps, in the cup flowers and chocolate.
A grandly acidy coffee, austerely tart yet voluptuously sweet. Complicated by hints of green apple or pie cherry, but the main expression is the huge, rich gesture of the acidity. The finish is tart but round and opulent.
Medium bodied but delicate, soft, exquisitely balanced, giddy with sweet fruit tones that may suggest cherry but ultimately express the purity and elegance of a perfectly processed coffee. The finish is sweet, long, and gently rich.
Smoky and richly heavy in its aromatics, but rather musty and monotoned in the cup. The musty tones, as they often do in Sumatras, hint at positive associations like spice and a sort of rough chocolate, but ultimately are too hard and unresilient to sustain too positive a reading.
Rich but subdued, with a stealthy, understated sweetness. Some aromatic intrigue suggests apples and spice. The restrained aroma and rather flat finish compromises an otherwise roundly expansive Caribbean cup.
The full-bodied, quietly rich cup with its low-toned fruit and dusk floral notes is classic Blue Mountain. But the aromatics are a bit faded and the cup shadowed by a hint of mustiness, both of which suggest that this coffee is perhaps a bit past its prime.
The roast turns the fruit high-toned and dryly pungent: cedar and spice in the aroma, sweet grapefruit in the cup. As the cup cools the fruit softens toward pear. Fine balance of sweet and dry tones in the cup, though the finish is rather heavily astringent.
Hugely rich, big-bodied, low-toned. Roundly full apricot and peach notes in both aroma and cup. A slight hint of mustiness shadows aroma and finish, but the cup is grandly clean.
Full body and sweet, voluptuously rounded acidity. Low-toned, symphonically complex fruit suggests melon in aroma, spicy apricot in cup and finish. A slight hint of mustiness is coiled inside the richness, modestly lowering my rating of this otherwise classic Blue Mountain cup.
Not your purist's Blue Mountain, but a fine, complex cup: rich, wine-like fruit, jasmine notes, and a hint of pleasantly rough mustiness that reads as a spicy chocolate
Medium-bodied but expansively rich with complex mid to low notes. Cedar, nuts and dry fruit in the aroma; sweetly melodic fruit and floral notes in the cup. A dash of astringency in the finish tightens the fruit notes toward grapefruit.
Delicate but rich. Medium body, sweet, round-toned acidity, and complex aromatics: In the aroma nut, floral, and cocoa-toned fruit, in the cup floral and spicy apple or pipe-tobacco notes. A cleanly balanced astringency enriches rather than flattens the finish.
Sweet, round, balanced, with a striking complex of aromatics that reads as wine or spicy fruit, figs perhaps. The finish is rich, winy, and slightly astringent.
Sweetly and robustly roasty. Musty tones, probably from the Sulawesi, hover between a sort of spice and a pleasantly dry chocolate, contributing an edge of intrigue to the pleasant balance of roastiness and rounded acidity. Roastmaster Brandon Riggs cites this blend's "tangy brightness and ... smooth body."
The roast nicely develops the clean, classically simple Costa Rica profile, rounding the sweet but authoritative acidity and turning a hint of fruit tartly pineapple-toned. Torreo owner Eric Patrick finds "floral [and] rich Burgundy" notes in this versatile cup.