Coffee Posts

Taylors High Voltage

I'm a big fan of Taylors - their coffee is easily available, well priced and generally pretty damn tasty. In recent months their range has expanded, with the arrival of "single origin" coffees, showcasing the character of four bean-producing nations - and hopefully more to come. Happily, their blended range remains - when I first ...

Raw Bean Unwind Laid-Back Latino Fusion

I'm honestly not sure what to make of Raw Bean. They make a big thing about how coffee is best when it's fresh, and so "we only roast our coffee once the order has been placed". All very sensible stuff, but then they put their coffee into bags and sell it to Waitrose ...

Pact San Isidro

The old saying about not judging books by their cover is nonsense. I've always judged books by their cover - when you're staring at a book shelf, be it in the local library, the local bookshop, or the virtual shelves of Amazon the only real option (other than standing there and reading the ...

Pact Toledo - Norte de Santander

Today's coffee is a Colombian bean from the Norte de Santander region, which is in the North East of the country, up by Venezuela. If nothing else, my coffee habits are improving my sense of South American geography! Toledo looks lighter roasted than I would normally go for, but has a rich aroma nonetheless. ...

Pact Fazenda Sertao

After enthusing about Pact's single sentence summaries in my last review, I've realised that the last few packets I've received have all followed a similar theme - milk chocolate, cherries, that kind of thing. In some ways this is entirely reasonable. Coffee often has a red fruit character - the bean comes from the ...

Pact Irmas Pereira

One thing I like about Pact is that their coffees always have a single-sentence summary on the packet; it's obviously not a perfect description, but it sets your expectations quite nicely. Of course, the down side is that when you come to write a review, you have to try and ignore those expectations! Irmas ...

Douwe Egberts Morning Americano

I have to admit, when I read the name Douwe Egberts it doesn't say "top notch coffee" to me. For some reason associate the name with the sort of coffee that you get served in pubs - the stuff that's been sat in the filter carafe since last April and has been brewed so ...

Pact San Marcos Timana

This week's coffee takes us back to the folk at Pact. After the first offering in my renewed subscription, I've got some high expectations - so let's see if they can continue to impress. San Marcos Timana is from the southwest of Colombia - San Marcos being the region within Timana from which the coffee ...

Pact Fig Pudding Espresso

I had a subscription with coffee-mongers Pact last year, but for a couple of reasons it wasn't destined to be a long-term thing. Firstly, their coffees were generally on the weak side for me and secondly I simply couldn't keep up with a new coffee from them every fortnight in addition to all the ...

Bird & Wild Raul Mamani Peru

We're used to coffee being branded by style or by region, or even by the farm of origin - but I think this is the first time that I've had a coffee simply branded with the name of the man who grew it. Raul Mamani's family smallholding is in the Tampbopata region of ...