A cautionary tale in which Kevin fails to get his preferred coffee from the roaster.
"I drank what was convenient, usually dark roasted blends from the store—bitter, strong, forgettable"
—Ken Smith
There are two roasts I buy regularly enough that they're usually available at home. I'm fortunate enough to have my roaster come to the farmers' market every week so I can, if need be, replenish my supply. From time to time, for whatever reason, sometimes I fail to pick up my coffee and am obliged to do an emergency grocery store run, absent an open cafe with good specialty roasts. Sadly, due to time and organisational pressures, there have been a few times lately that I've needed to run to the supermarket to pick something up. Today was such a day.
My local store, a fairly down-market example, does nonetheless have a reasonable selection of whole beans beyond the likes of Folgers. At the one end there are beans from Starbucks and Peets Coffee, some of which are quite palatable. The dark-roast decaf fro Peets wasn't a disaster even though it was preground. Today is the second time in a month I've been obliged to get my beans this way, and whilst I've been rather worried about the outcome, I have yet to be really disappointed. The example I picked up today is from a San Francisco small-batch roaster whose name was unfamiliar to me. Described as being a blend of African and American beans, and a medium-roast, I took the risk. Whilst it didn't shout fruit flavours at me, it was a cut above the usual generic American-style bitter coffee flavour; there were subtle hints of fruit and floral notes, enough to make my breakfast cup not a disgusting disappointment. Damned with faint praise this coffee may be, but I can see me drinking it until I can top up with my usual single-origin Nicaraguan.
Deciphering Supermarket coffee labels
I wrote briefly about this before, in choosing and storing coffee beans, but I will elaborate some. Grocery stores are not generally known for supporting the coffee geeks and snobs such as I, hence you're not going to have an easy time finding really quality coffee. In paricular, they avoid having the roast date on the packaging, on the grounds that most people are going to assue hat a four-week old bag of coffee will be past its best. Instead, they handle it like many packaged goods, with a "best before" date, often years away. Now a good roaster knows their coffee will hold for weeks, even onths after roasting, and afficionados of coffee know this too, so the best-before date is worse than useless to us.
Most roasters, knowing this, will include hints that this is a decent coffee—those I saw bearing "Arabica" and "whole beans" gave me the clue that at least the roaster cares enough to include this inforation. One or two had inforation about the country of origin, one or two will even list the co-operative from which it was sourced. I have rarely seen tracking to a single farm, but to see the area it was grown is not uncommon. Once I saw the bean's variety mentioned, though I expect this to be even rarer still.
Even with the dearth of useful information, it's not hard to find a coffee that rises above the "stick it in a brewer" norm. It's still something of a lottery, but a good roaster will at least load the dice in your favour.
Roast levels are another matter. I saw a few that mentioned "light' or medium roast", but supermarkets tend not to like that, preferring to use "strength" as a measure of roast level, perpetuating the myth that "strong coffee" means dark, punch-in-the-mouth-bitter flavour. i intend to write that as a separate topic, as there's a lot of nonsense talked about what "strong coffee" means. Spoiler alert, it's nothing to do with roast levels. What I have discovered is that the roast level indicates the determination of the roaster to stand out fro the crowd. It's not unusual to see small-batch roasters advertising even a light roast, speaking of which, that last light roast I bought was truly excellent, way above my expectations for grocery-store coffee. Some stores mention a range of "strength", usually from 3 to 5, which I've discovered means "light-medium" to "dark roast". Some use "Espresso" for dark roasts, I have seen "for filter" to describe mediums.
finally, on roast levels, something that baffled me for a long time were descriptors like "French roast" or "City roast". A little research got me to this:
The lightest end of the spectrum is sometimes called cinnamon roast, a coffee that is pale in colour and preserves much of the bean’s original acidity and floral or fruity flavours. City roast is a light-medium roast that finishes just at the end of the first crack; it offers a balance of brightness and sweetness with mild caramel notes. Full city roast is medium, taken a bit further into the roast, reducing acidity and highlighting chocolatey or nutty flavours. Vienna roast, a medium-dark level, introduces light oil on the surface and a deeper body with mild smoky tones. French roast is darker, oilier, and more bitter, often with roasty, carbonised notes. Italian roast is the darkest common level, extremely oily and bitter, where the roast character completely dominates and origin characteristics are totally lost.
So, what to expect from my grocery store coffee?
If you're careful, and if you're lucky, you'll find some coffees with nice character, but on the whole they're going to be traditionally-tasting dark or darker-medium roasts, moderately bitter at best but an occasional finish of light fruit acidity and fruit notes but largely forgettable, as Ken Smith notes above. they will be a cut above gas station coffee, which is only there because the coffee gods gave up on the highways. Which fruits will you find? Predominantly stone fruit, though I've had a light roast with some blueberry, and this one today had some strawberry hidden away. You'll sometimes find one that is more-ish, leaving a little tingle on the sides of the tongue that hint at that pleasant acidity layer hidden behind the bitterness. but that's grocery-store coffee for ya; most people don't want "acidity" and would avoid any coffee that advertises it, thinking it'll just make their stomachs sour. I feel sorry for them as they're missing out on another dimension of flavour, but the bulk of the market is wanting the classic American-style, forgettable roast bitterness and nowt else worthy of mention; of course the supermarket chains know this and seek only profit, not flavour (understandably!). As a coffee hobbyist and lover of specialty coffees I'm an outlier. In Europe, I've no idea what your choices look like, I remember only Illy and Lavazza, both darker Italian-styles, but both have offerings in lower roast levels which had some good qualities in addition to "coffee flavour". Then I'm in a small town on the West coast and your local stores may do better. Go, take a look and if you find something yummy, do let me know. Good luck.
The experience was certainly better than I thought it would be, but it won't change my habits or tempt me away from my Precious, Pachamama Coffee's single origin Nicaraguan.
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