Dark Costa Rican Tarrazu, Whole Bean Coffee, 5 Pound Bag

Good deal, but consider freshness

This is a great price for some good beans, and the awesome Amazon prime shipping is just icing on the cake. However, one important thing to consider: When you buy direct from the roaster’s website, the beans are roasted fresh and shipped within a day or two. When you buy from Amazon, though, the beans come from a stack of bags that have been sitting in an Amazon warehouse somewhere. The date code is printed on the bags, and mine was over 6 months old! Anyway, this roaster does make a great product, but I would recommend buying direct from their website. Prices are comparable, so the only downside is you’ll have to pay for shipping yourself.

Great coffee flavor. And very, very smooth

It’s hard to describe flavor, isn’t it? I would compare the smoothness and body of this coffee to a Panama Boquete, but with a much more intense coffee flavor.

When my order arrived today I immediately ground a sample and pulled a shot of espresso with my twenty year old Gaggia. Great crema on the first try. That tells me the beans are quite fresh.

This is described as a dark roast. I’d describe it as something like “full city roast plus.” It’s dark…but not too dark. The beans are just to the point of releasing some oils, but not full on oily. The aroma upon opening the bag is great. And when grinding, that aroma just gets better.

Regardless of crema, aroma and appearance, the proof is in the tasting and I can only say that this coffee gets very high marks. It is rich, low acid coffee with a great mouth feel and great coffee flavor. I think it’s well worth a try and personally I know that I’ll be ordering it again.

From Superb Dark Roast to I Don’t Know What it is

On their web site, Coffee Bean Direct advertises this as their darkest roast. Previously, on Amazon, I reviewed Coffee Bean Direct’s Italian Espresso Roast and find the Super Dark Espresso to be equally good and only slightly different. For my basic observations see the previous review; this review will serve to give the reader my observations made in a side-by-side comparison.

I have uploaded an image of the two roasts, the Italian Espresso on the left, the Super Dark Espresso on the right. Both are, clearly, Espresso roasts as evidenced by the surface oil on the beans. Both roasts are slightly unevenly roasted, the Italian Espresso more so than the Super Dark. Not clearly shown in the image is the fact that a small percentage of the beans of the Super Dark roast are starting to break apart, a consequence of exceeding the usual roasting temperatures of the so-called “second crack.” So what? It indicates to me that the Super Dark roast beans have been roasted to a point…

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