Best Supermarket Coffee Brand??

[Cuppa Joe]

I mainly mix flavored coffee with espresso, Colombian Supremo or French Roast. As far as the flavored coffee goes, I've been enjoying Seattle's Best ground coffee. They have a nice Hazelnut, also a Vanilla and a Creme Brulee. I mix the espresso in to give it more bite.

For the longest time I bought Don Francisco ground coffee, as they make a number of flavored coffees, but lately the ones I got haven't tasted as good...maybe I got some cans that had stale coffee in them or something. I've been thinking maybe I need to get whole bean and grind it myself.

 

[richardb52]

Eight O'Clock

For years we used Eight O'clock Whole bean roast and it beats the other supermarket coffees hands down. I like it better than Starbucks also. Now I am going to start roasting my own (i-roaster) but anything I roast will ultimately have to be compared to the Eight O'Clock. I know that that sounds blasphemous but it is the best standard I have until a better one comes along. By the way does anyone know a good full bodied green bean that I can roast. I am pretty excited about this and have really learned alot from this forum. Thanks everyone.

 

[javahill]

If you go to www.coffeereview.com and search for 8 O'Clock reviews, you will see that it was reviewed 2x and it has the two lowest scores on the entire site since it started in 1997. The threshold for specialty coffee is 80 points on a 100 point scale. 8 O'Clock garnered a 60 and a 63.

It is better than the crap in a can from Folgers and Maxwell House, but there is soooooo much better coffee out there.

 

[Alun_evans]

Good to see you back James. Been a while since you posted.

 

[javahill]

It is nice to be back. I've been busy selling coffee. Actually, mostly busy creating a new performance measurement system for the company that engages everyone from the CEO to the front line to play the same game. Pretty cool. Three major components:

1. Know the rules - what are we all trying to do? Get everyone playing the same game so we work together.

2. Follow the action - build scorecards, get everyone together once a week to talk about performance - and here is one of the brilliant pieces - about what the numbers are going to be. So the financials are in the hands of everyone, not just Finance and we're looking into the future to create it, not in to the past to explain variances.

3. Stake in the outcome - for the one game, everybody is in the same bonus pool from CEO to the cleaners in the factory.

Good stuff. More particiation, visibility and accountability cause the organization to behave with more integrity and intelligence. [/b]

 

[richardb52]

eight o'clock

I would never consider eight o'clock to be a specialty coffee but just a pretty good supermarket coffee. Consumer Reports listed it as a "Best Buy" for both flavor and price. I am sure there are many better coffees out there but not that many in supermarkets which is probally great news for people who sell specialty coffees.

 

[ElPugDiablo]

Oxygen is the cause of stale coffee. If you can keep the coffee in an oxygen free environment, you can keep the coffee fresh up to 3 months before a skilled taster can notice the difference and 6 months before an ordinary palate can taste the difference.

After roasting you put the coffee in nitrogen flushed bins while they degass and then put the whole beans into packages with a one way value to enable degassing to continue and high package integrity (no leaks) then you can get fresh coffee in a supermarket. Not many companies go to this trouble, but some do. So the observation that there is a lot of old coffee in supermarkets is true. But it is not universally true.

If you have a neighborhood roaster, changes are they do not have the technology to degass in nitrogen flushed bins or the packagers and film to keep coffee fresh. They have little choice but to sell coffee shortly after it is roasted to keep it fresh. They also probably do not have the space to hold more than 10 days of inventory.

I disagree. While nitrogen flushing and one way valve bag innovation prevent coffee from oxidizing, they cannot stop coffee from losing aromas. 2 weeks after roasting coffee will lose a good portion of their fresh roasted aroma. A big part of the coffee experience is coffee's fresh roasted aroma. Even if the coffee oil did not interact with oxygen, once they lost their aroma, they are not fresh.

It is true that most micro roasters cannot afford the best technology money can buy, and they do not have enough storage space. To some extend their coffee suffered. However, I suspect these are not the reasons why they roast in small batches and hold less than 10 days of inventory. The appeal of small batches fresh roasted coffee is the same as why daily fresh baked breads still warm from the oven is far superior to those on supermarket shelf. Assuming equal quality beans, and equal roasting skill, I'll take the poorly packaged less than 2 weeks old beans from a local roaster over better packaged supermarket beans.

 

[pan_man]

inventory control

doesn't much of this have to do with inventory control? if one store carries bags of beans that are two months old in the store, and one week old out of the roaster they will taste completely different than the exact same brand that is only one week old on the shelf. this is why home roasting is such a kick- you have complete control over when you drink it, in relation to when it was roasted.
the truth is the same brand/roast/bean from several different super markets in your area could all yield different results in the cup, and i would venture a guess that many of those cups would be sub par. i think must of us are accustomed to sub par- until you start drinking roasts within the precious window of true freshness.

 

[chftx20]

Community Coffee Dark Roast whole bean, ground coarse for a French press.
Superb! But the best preground - and I mean, this stuff's amazing! - is Community's Cafe Special. Just be sure you have a top-quality maker.

 

[jesica]

One of the Newman's Own coffees just got rated best among several coffees tasted in Eating Well magazine.

 

[FrankSalsille]

The best ive found at my local supermarkets here in NY are, in order of my favorite first

Allegro Coffee(Whole Foods store roasted)
Green Mountain Coffee Roaster(Stop N Shop, Pathmark, Kings)
Bucks County Coffee(Pathmark, Walbaums)
Caribou Cofee(Pathmark)
Peets(Stop N Shop, Kings, Whole Foods)

 

[Deleted member 8040]

I must admit, I have not read through all the posts here yet but I will add my fair share of remarks upon supermarket coffee brands.

In UK we have these foiled bags of ground or whole bean coffees.. Genuinely and generally, they taste pretty good. But wow, when my brother and his partner visited Jamaica and got Blue mountain beans that were only a week old, the taste was just incredible.

I believe that the fresher the bean, the better the taste.. But in UK, it is impossible to get fresh beans unless you make an effort to get to the right place.

Personally my favourite (and ofcourse its down to personal preference) is probably one of the corporation ones like Costa / Starbucks / Nero etc. Any of these are pretty much in my top scorers.

Hope one of us has helped though

 

[trojan09]

Soo I think two of the supermarkets have the best selection of fair trade or organic coffees.

Trader Joe's has substantially increased their selection of single-origin, Fair Trade coffee. Some of the blends include Sumatra, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua, among others.Trader Joe's Five Country Espresso ready to break open.Weaver's coffe is good too which I tried recently, the Organic Blend is from something like 7 countries.

If not organic then Peet's is good too