Coffee

[NQAS]

I would like some recommendations for coffee from small coffee roasters.

I'm lucky to live in a town with two coffee roasters, and I buy coffee from them periodically. The coffee is okay, but I shop at them (well, one in particular) because they are tremendously involved in the community and the people there are extremely nice.

But I also like buying coffee from all over. My preference is to buy from small roasters, and sometimes it's hard to tell which roasters are small, or small-ish, and which are increasingly large but try to present themselves as small, home-town roasters. (Kind of like "craft brewers," who, among further inspection, are owned by one of the massive beer companies.) Not that small roasters are better or worse than large roasters (or vice versa), but I'd like to steer my coffee dollars to small and growing business. So, any recommendations?

You might ask what I like? Or you might not. I like pretty much everything. I'm far from a connoisseur and I don't have a particularly fine palate. I've had coffee from all over, and my conclusion is that most coffee tastes like. . . coffee, whether it's Kona or Yirgacheffe or Rwandan or Sumatran or Colombian. So, not particularly sophisticated. My wife thinks that any coffee that isn't espresso isn't worth the time. So there's an ongoing dispute.

Also, there's one coffee I really like. My daughter bought it at the airport in the Dominican Republic, and I have been unable to buy it anywhere since. Their website is in Spanish and they don't seem to ship to the US. So maybe you know of retailers who carry it: La Gente de la Isla.

Thanks.

[Jilly_in_VA]

1. Mayorga

It's the ONLY one I buy now. I get the Café Cubano roast at Costco, but they also make a lighter roast, the name of which I forget at the moment. It is organic, grown by small farms and cooperatives, and direct traded. mayorganics.com if you can't find it locally. It's a little expensive but worth every drop! I even send it to my daughter in Tennessee.

[FuzzyRabbit]

2. English version of their website .

https://www.lagentedelaisla.com/en

It looks like they do ship to the US.

[leftieNanner]

3. Local Roaster in Southern Oregon

Griffin Creek Coffee. You can order online.

https://griffin-creek-coffee.com

I like dark roast - Morning Mud is my favorite. I think they only sell beans - grind it yourself. All of their coffee is organic, most is Free Trade, and some is from Women Owned farms.

[Freddie]

4. From Central Pennsylvania

[link:http://www.freshroastedcoffee.com

They roast to order and make k cup pods roasted to order. Good prices too.

[Pobeka]

5. Probably a reason why it all tastes alike is it's all too old.

You have maybe a week after roasting to get the best, and most unique flavors from a roast.

This is the advantage of buying from a local roaster -- if you can confirm the roast date.

It's likely any small roaster you buy from and have shipped, if they don't give a roast date, or if it says "best before" isn't going to be fresh enough to make it worth the extra trouble of buying versus your local roaster.

Lighter roasts are also, generally speaking, where you are going to notice the most flavor differences.

To get a really espresso or cup 'o coffee, you need 3 things:

. The unroasted bean itself is relatively fresh (i.e. hasn't been sitting in a bag for a year)
. The roaster knows what they are doing.
. The roasted coffee is less than a week past the roast day.

When you have those things in place, you'll notice definite differences in flavor. I lean towards light and fruity, while my SO likes darker, more chocolate overtones. There is an awesome espresso place in Portland, OR that you can pick the type of bean you want in a latte, and the difference in flavor is stunning, and quite fun to try.

p.s. Probably the reason why you liked that Dominican Republic coffee is because it was a really fresh roast. We had the same experience with a Guatemalan roast many years ago that was incredible -- bought by a friend just 2 days before in Guatemala.

[hippywife]

6. Our budget dictates we buy coffee from the grocery.

Living on SS alone, there's just no way around it, especially given the amount my husband drinks.

But back when we could buy it from a small local roaster, there was a single source Sumatran that was really nice. I could even drink it black. But we can't afford that any more and, even if I wanted to purchase a small treat once in a while, the roaster is no longer around. Sigh.

[tishaLA]

7. Los Angeles has a ton, but

a couple near me are https://www.citybean.com/ and https://boxxcoffee.la/

Venice has a few great places, but the only one whose name I remember is https://gnarwhalcoffee.com/