Brew City coffee roasters Campfire blend whole bean coffee.
This is a review of the Brew City coffee roasting company Campfire blend whole bean coffee. This coffee blend was recommended to me by a friend. I purchased this coffee at an RV resort it is supposedly a proprietary blend made specifically for that RV resort. I purchased a 12 ounce bag of whole beans for the reasonable price of $12.99. The bag was of a good quality tightly sealed with a standard degassing valve. Information printed on the bag about the coffee that was inside was nonexistent other than the name of the blend which was Campfire Blend and that it was whole bean coffee and some tasting notes of caramel, pecan, marshmallow and dark chocolate . No description of the roast level, not description of the origin of beans, no roast date or expiration date, not even basic brewing instructions. I suspect the beans were Arabica possibly Brazilian, Honduran, Guatemalan blend because of the size of the beans.
Upon opening the bag I got the aroma of burnt sugar and roasted nuts. Inspecting the coffee beans I found very large beans of a decent quality with a few broken beans and bean fragments here and there, nothing terrible. The roast level appeared to be a dark-medium. The beans were virtually dry...no coffee oils present coating the beans.
My next step was to brew a batch so I started with my usual 1:18 ratio coffee to water. A 66 gram dose was ground to about 850 microns on a Fellow Opus conical burr grinder (setting 8) and was brewed with 1.2 liters of filtered room temperature water in a Melitta Vision Luxe drip batch brew coffee maker. The aroma of the ground coffee was pleasant about the same as the beans in the bag burnt sugar and roasted nuts. The brewed coffee however smelled terrible like wet dog combined with wet rotting leaves.
Cupping the coffee and tasting it I found no acidity and a pleasant silky smooth mouth feel. I got absolutely none of the tasting notes described on the bag. What I got was tasting notes of burnt wood, old cigarette ash tray musty bitter dark brown water. This coffee was absolutely horrible. No matter how I adjusted the grind size or amount of coffee these whole beans were incapable of brewing an acceptable cup of coffee. I suspect that these coffee beans even though they are a proprietary blend made specifically for this RV park were stale...way past their prime.
Using the scoring system of the SCA which is the governing body for speciality coffee. A score of 80 or above indicates a high quality specialty grade of coffee I would rate this coffee at a 65 and a do not recommend. I honestly believe this whole bean coffee was stale and way past its prime. It should be noted that I am not a coffee professional and this review is just my honest opinion.