Coffee Rating:
4.0 out of 5 coffee cups

Marley Coffee
Buffalo Soldier Dark Roast Ground Coffee
Price: $9.95 8 oz.

Marley Coffee was kind enough to send us free coffees to sample from their line of six ground coffees and a bag of their Jamaica Blue Mountain whole bean coffee to review. Music icon Bob Marley yearned to return to farming someday, his son Rohan and friend Shane Whittle kept Marley’s dream alive by founding Marley Coffee. The company sources its beans from around the world, including Central America, Ethiopia, and Jamaica. The Jamaica beans are from a 52-acre private estate atop the Blue Mountains, known as a region with the best coffee beans. Marley Coffee partners with farms in Africa, Central America and other top coffee-growing regions worldwide to make their excellent coffee. Marley coffee is known for their support of communities and their commitment to the environment through organic, sustainable and ethical practices. Marley Coffee sent their ground coffee series for us to review and it has all been very good, imagine how good their whole bean coffee must be.

When opening the package of ground Buffalo Soldier coffee the coffee smell is inviting. The Buffalo Soldier ground coffee was brewed with a French Press and it was tasted with and without half and half.

The Buffalo Soldier coffee when brewed tastes strong with a rich mouth feel and full flavor like a dark roast should. The coffee is smooth with minimal bitterness, less bitterness than most dark roast coffees I’ve tried. The flavor is delicious with chocolate, fruit and herb tones that mix in a very mellow, flavorful way. This is a great coffee to start your day with, it’s a perfect choice for your everyday coffee or a special on the weekend cup you’ll want to savor. Ground coffee is sometimes lacking, but this coffee will not disappoint. I highly recommend you give Marley’s Buffalo Soldier ground coffee a try, it’s a coffee I’d happily drink every day.

Coffee Rating:
4.5 out of 5 coffee cups

Simple Industries, Inc.
Ridgelyne Jamaica Blue Mountain® Whole Beans Medium and Dark Roast
Price: $13.99 per one-fourth pound, $24.49 per half-pound, $39.99 per pound

Simple Industries was kind enough to send us a two 8 ounce (1/2 pound) samples of their whole bean Jamaica Blue Mountain® coffee in medium and dark roast. We had heard that Jamaica Blue Mountain® was some of the finest coffee you could buy. After tasting Simple Industries coffee we can see why: it is superb, delicious coffee! Both the medium and dark roast coffees deserve an equally high rating. We rarely hand out coffee ratings of 4.5 but this coffee is simply that good.

Jamaica Blue Mountain® is a high quality and rare coffee specially grown in Jamaica. Simple Industries imports this excellent coffee which is roasted by their supplier, Coffee Solutions Ltd., a master roaster in Jamaica. Simple Industries Ridgelyne Jamaica Blue Mountain® coffee is roasted, packaged and certified under the strict quality control of the Coffee Industry Regulation Act of Jamaica. Jamaica Blue Mountain® is made with a uniquely pure Jamaican variant Arabica bean that is grown under extremely difficult conditions. The coffee beans are grown in the blue mountains of Jamaica, the highest mountains in the Caribbean. The mountains are known for their cool weather, heavy rainfall, and nitrogen rich soil, making for a perfect coffee growing climate. Another thing to like about Simple Industries besides their high quality coffee is that they only purchase their coffee beans from coffee mills that actively support small farmers and their communities. Simple Industries ships their coffee worldwide.

The Ridgelyne Jamaica Blue Mountain® coffee was brewed with a French Press and it was tasted with and without half and half. Both tastings were equally delicious with and without half-and-half for the medium and dark roast coffees. The coffee samples arrived packaged in a sturdy box with two packs of coffee wrapped in decorative burlap bags. Once removed from the bags the coffee beans were packaged in sealed gold foil bags ready to be opened and brewed.

When opening the package of medium roast Jamaica Blue Mountain® coffee whole beans the coffee bean aroma is mellow and aromatic. The medium roast when brewed has a lighter chocolate tone than the dark roast and herb flavor that is deep but milder than the dark roast. Overall Jamaica Blue Mountain® medium roast is exceptionally smooth, mellow and satisfying. If you love flavorful medium roast you’ll love this coffee.

When opening the package of dark roast Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee whole beans the coffee bean aroma is strong and aromatic. The dark roast when brewed has an enticing flavor that coats your mouth. With many dark roast coffees there is quite a bit of bitterness, here there is almost no bitterness (just enough to recognize it is dark roast), a deep, round flavor, wonderful chocolate tones and a pronounced herb flavor. For a dark roast to be this smooth yet full-bodied is impressive. If you enjoy dark roast you will especially love the strong flavors, low bitterness and smoothness of this fantastic coffee.

Simple Industries Ridgelyne Jamaica Blue Mountain® must be tasted to fully appreciate the quality of this excellent coffee. Treat yourself and purchase your Jamaica Blue Mountain® coffee from Simple Industries for a coffee experience you won’t soon forget.

Coffee Rating:
3 out of 5 coffee cups

CoffeeAM
Costa Rica Reserve Medium Roast
Price: $12.95 1 lb, Sale Price $10.95 1 lb

CoffeeAM was kind enough to send us four free coffees to sample from their line of gourmet coffees. CoffeeAM fresh roasts their coffee for immediate shipment to provide the freshest coffee possible to coffee enthusiasts. CoffeeAM has 150 flavored coffees, including coffee from various regions of the world and their own in-house crafted coffee blends. CoffeeAm also carries a selection of gourmet tea blends, herbal, and loose leaf teas, as well as coffee and tea equipment online.

When ordering at CoffeeAM you can choose the specific grind for your coffeemaker. My samples arrived in an attractive silver package with a notation on the packages that said the coffee was ground for me and printed my name on the package. The choice of grind when ordering online and the packaging for their customers is a nice individual touch provided by CoffeeAM.

The fourth coffee we tried from CoffeeAM was the Costa Rica Reserve coffee, which was ground by the company specifically at my request for a French Press. The package of Costa Rica Reserve ground coffee when opened was a medium roast coffee with a strong roasted coffee smell. The Costa Rica Reserve coffee was brewed with a French Press and it was tasted with and without half and half.

The Costa Rica Reserve coffee beans are grown in the region of Tarrazu at high altitudes above 3,900 feet. The Costa Rica Reserve coffee when brewed had a pleasant mellow coffee aroma and a smooth coffee flavor with fruity undertones and slight acidic taste with no bitterness. The Costa Rica Reserve would be a great choice for a cup of coffee later in the day since it is so mellow and smooth without bitterness. The Costa Rican coffee has many positive reviews on the website from happy customers who like this coffee. The CoffeeAM coffees we sampled all have a very smooth taste with no bitterness. If you are looking for an aromatic coffee with smooth taste the Costa Rica Reserve coffee is a good choice for your every day of the week coffee.

Coffee Rating:
4.5 out of 5 coffee cups

Aromo Coffee
100% Arabica Aromo ESE Espresso coffee Pods: BOUNCE

You know you want it. You want it bad. Maybe it’s first thing in the morning and you can barely open your eyes. Or maybe it’s late in the afternoon and you’ve just endured two hours of won’t-this-meeting-ever-end. You need coffee. And not just any coffee—you need espresso! So what are your choices? You can head off to see your local barista and expect to pay a pretty penny for that desperately-needed cup. Or you can dive headlong into the do-it-yourself routine of heading to the kitchen, measuring, grinding, tamping, heating, and pulling a shot with your home espresso rig. Choosing between the financial cost of having it made for you, or the time invested in the mess and hassle of rolling your own, you may be on the verge of choosing a Diet Coke instead. Fear not, dear reader; relief is at hand.

Welcome to the World of ESE Coffee Pods. ESE (Easy Serving Espresso) pods are a quick and easy way to enjoy espresso at home (or in the office) without all the drama. Pods generally contain about 7 grams of ground espresso compressed into a disk that is then wrapped in a filter package, made of material not unlike that of a tea bag. All you need to do to brew that cup is to drop a pod into your ESE-compatible machine, add water, and go. And when you’re all done, the whole thing is compostable, which is more than you can say about that styrofoam cup you got at that expensive coffee shop. Cheaper than store-bought and handier than making a mess all over the counter, ESE pods may not be the key to world peace, but your own life is certainly going to be more peaceful. So where do I get this magical solution, this ESE pod? Read on.

We checked out the folks at Aromo Coffee. They feature several different ESE pods, so that you can tailor your cup of espresso to your particular tastes. They have several different “strength ratings” for their different varieties of espresso. BUZZ, available in both regular and a decaffeinated version, has a strength rating of 3. While it’s certainly nothing approaching light, it has a lighter, less-intense espresso taste for those times when you want to take it easy. BOOST is a notch more intense, with a strength rating of 4. And finally, there’s BOUNCE, which rates a full 5 on their strength rating scale. Since we have a well-know bias toward the darker, more intense end of the coffee continuum, we brewed up a pod of BOUNCE.

On opening the foil pouch that contained the pod, we got a strong fresh-roasted coffee aroma. We fired up Old Betsy, our espresso maker, and sat down to contemplate the fruits of our labors. The coffee brewed up strong and dark, as expected. It held intense coffee flavor, but with none of the unpleasant “off” flavors—often an excessive, almost aggressive bitterness—we’ve seen in some less-well-executed dark roasted coffees. It had a good, rich, almost-syrupy mouth feel, reminding us that we had taken a swig of something real, and not just another cup of hot water with a brown crayon melted into it. And finally, it delivered a smooth finish, with a lingering intense coffee flavor and notes of chocolate, and leaving us with a goofy grin on our coffee-loving face.

On our CaffeineConspriacy.com scale of coffee yumminess, we give Aromo Coffee’s BOUNCE a full four-and-a-half cups out of five. Why not a five? Only because we’re still looking for coffee perfection—maybe a cup that brews itself before we even ask—although this stuff comes darn close.