We finally took the plunge and bought a Gaggia Brera bean to cup machine. Best buy ever, wife happy, me happy even eldest son happy.

Anyway after the initial excitement, visit to Whittards and two week caffine headache have subsided I have discovered the poor choice of beans available in our local supermarkets.

So what do you recommend for a long strong Americano, and what’s a great espresso bean, and where do you get them from?

So far – like Whittard Santos & Java, Whittard espresso roast is OK, Lavazza expresso from Tescos is not so nice.

All advice welcome.

Thanks
Nick.

I like Starbucks Pike Place coffee beans. £4 a pack.

I tried Asda extra special beans but, whilst they were cheaper than the Starbucks beans, I needed about 20% more.

I’d also like some other recommendations too being new to freshly ground coffee from my Krupps burr grinder.

For mainstream outlets we usually find that a bit of judicious blending helps.

Currently we have 50:50 Taylors Rich Italian / Percol Espresso. Quite often we have the big red Lavazza bag and mix that with Percol or Taylors.

Today I bought Taylors (2 for £6) and a Black Lavazza, to mix.

If you have somewhere to have them delivered to, Happy Donkey’s blends are great AND cheap.

I like Taylors as well – acceptable and cheapish (Asda offer). Hated Percol, just couldn’t get it working in my machine, probably user error. Sainsbury’s own stuff was OK.

Illy for special occasions. Pricey but comes in a nice tin.

I use hasbean (google for URL). Quality way ahead of anything else out there as they roast the bean straight after you place the order.

You will struggle to get beans as fresh as that from anywhere else. Supermarket/starbucks/whittard will be donkey years old beans.

Beans are good for a month after roasting and the quality start going downhill after that in my experience.

A bit expensive with postage cost though but worth it for the quality.

Tesco regular beans. Don’t laugh, they’re OK!

We get big bags of the Starbucks blend beans from Costco.

Starbucks beans are pretty good. Espresso Blend beans are nice and oily and make a good strong espresso.

I’ve tried Hasbean a few times and I find their roast a bit light for my taste/equipment. I prefer a darker roast for wallop over subtle notes.

Taylor’s Rich Italian appear to be identical to Lavazza Red beans.

Lavazza gold label is nice.

Where do you live? Find your local roaster.

Tesco beans can be good.

I swear by Whittards Guatamalan Elephant. Order online for freshest beans and search for voucher codes for %%% off.

Second “find your local roaster”

Hasbean or Happy Donkey on line. Pollards if you happen to be in Sheffield, plenty of places in London or I rather like Deep Mills stuff from Suffolk (they do mail order too).

Nothing out of a supermarket or a chain coffee bar will come close to the freshness (and therefore taste) of a decent specialist roastery.

Hasbean. Generally the beans are delivered within a day or so of roasting.

Get their Espresso starter pack. There should be something there that you like.

Taylor’s Lazy Sunday. from urgh to MY EYES on a Sunday morning

Watch out for oily beans in Gaggia bean to cup machines as they can clog the grinder up. I use Lavazza beans in mine, favourite beans were the Lidl espresso beans but they haven’t stocked them for a while

monmouth are very good (dunno if they do mail order) but the best beans i have had via the interweb have been climpson and sons house espresso.

anything from the supermarket i have tasted has been mediocre at best but i guess i have been spoilt with good freshly roasted beans available from 5 different roasters near where i work (Square mile, Monmouth, Hasbean, StAli, Caravan) plus a few others i haven’t tried yet.

Illy red beans – sweet brazillian goodness. Better local roasts are available but I have a bean 2 cup and you can’t beat Illy when supermarket sweeping (I mean value not price). It’s nice trying local roasts and blends but b2c needs to be dialled in to get best of beans and you can’t do that for each bag..

Asda Dark & Roast Ground,is a goodie.It’s on at £2.29 at our local store.Lavazzo Espresso is my favourite “Big” brand coffee.Shame more places don’t do 50g trail sizes,sometimes you don’t wanna plonk down £3.50-£4.50 to experiment.

Got to Cafe Nero, ask for a bag of beans. £4.99 for 500g, brilliant. My local was out of stock so I’m having to make do with Lavazza Black, and it is a real let-down. Sainsburys own brand espresso aren’t bad either.

Waitrose have a good selection.
I got some Guatemala Elephant Beans which were very nice. Will be buying them again.

Thanks for the tips, loads to try there.

i like grumpy mule personally. cracking beans.

tend to get taylors/whittards/lavazza/etc. as stocked by supermarket tho.

most supermarket beans are already stale by the time you buy them as are whittards that sit in those big open tubs. and the illy/lavazza stuff smells great when you open it but a day later not so good, usually the small roaster’s beans have a roasting date not a use by date.
some haven’t even finished de-gassing they are that fresh so i leave them for a week.
personally i would never go back to cheap beans, i don’t mind paying £20kilo for great beans as the coffee i make is way better than the shite from starbucks/costa/cafe nero etc, i guess it depends how serious you are about your coffee 😀

HasBean have excellent coffee. Roasted to order. Don’t go wasting your time on supermarket coffee or stuff that’s been hanging around. Try one of Steve’s blends (Jabberwocky ?) if you’re a bit overwhelmed by the range. And later you can get some green and have a go at roasting your own.

Like folks say, there are a bunch of online folks who’ll get freshly roasted beans to you in a day or two. If you’re in London then you have several roasters dotted around the huge city.

as are whittards that sit in those big open tubs

Yeah I said in a post ^^^^ to order them online – every time I have ordered like that they have been really fresh with a lovely oily coating and produce great crema.

I swear by Whittards Guatamalan Elephant. Order online for freshest beans and search for voucher codes for %%% off.

+1 for the Guatamalan Elephant from Whittard’s. I order this all the time.

£3.50 P&P from Whittard though.

I know they’ll drop that if I spend >£30 but I’d like to buy my beans ‘little and often’.

another hasbean regular – once a month I usually order ‘Blake’ a typical dark italian style, ‘Breakfast Bomb’ quite literally does what is says on the tin and one of the brazil fas something or other, chocolatey thick espressos.

Unless Im london (my nearest roaster!) this is the best thing, delivered within 24 hours and kicks anything off a shop shelf into touch…

£3.50 P&P from Whittard though.

I know they’ll drop that if I spend >£30 but I’d like to buy my beans ‘little and often’.

I bought a whole load before Christmas (the deal was so good I bulk bought to take full advantage of it) and bunged them in the freezer. I cannot discerne any kind of reduction in quality yet. (Probably about half way through it all now).

I can recommend having a look on the ‘net for some Nicaraguan coffee if you can find it. When I travelled through Central America I thought it was the best of the bunch.

As with others love Hasbean, I have a subscription with them that gets you a different coffee every month.
Also big fan of Square Mile Roast, they tend to be a little more expensive online, if you can find a local coffee shop that stocks them their beans are much cheaper.

Generally I use Hasbean for filter/Aeropress and Square Mile’s Red Brick espresso in our machine.

Both way better than anything you will get from supermarket or a high street coffee shop.

TooTall – Member
Where do you live? Find your local roaster.

Local roaster is exactly 37 metres from my desk. Very fresh lovely coffee.

why don’t you ask experts?

[edit]or some other experts[/edit]

I live in Peterborough, only local roasters I can find are commercial types who don’t sell to the public.

On the question of local roasters – anyone got a particular recommendation for one in Edinburgh?

I’ve used Hasbean before with some good results (although one was rather weak for my wife’s taste). I’ve just ordered one of the expresso starter packs which looks like it’s got some good stuff in it.

I think I might give their Breakfast Bomb a go as well – sounds exactly what my wife needs in the morning!