Dark Roasts Reviews

The ultra-dark roast turns mouthfeel lean, but spares us astringency and leaves us with a gently pungent, delicately rich cup with a shimmer of cardamom-toned spice and scorched cedar complication.

(As brewed in a Keurig B60 single-serve brewing device using a "K-Cup" capsule at a cup volume of 5.25 ounces): Sweet, round, toasty caramel aroma with a hint of flowers. In the cup very balanced: sweet, toasty, rich, with a hint of green apply tartness and pruny fruit edging toward chocolate. Sweet and rich in the short finish; turns slightly woody in the long.

Intense, deeply rich aroma dominated by cedar notes with hints of plum or prune that lean toward semi-sweet chocolate. In the cup smooth and substantial in mouthfeel, powerful and balanced, but limited in nuance. Like the cup, the finish is structurally impressive (rich, clean) but simple.

For both Ken (81) and co-taster Ted Lingle (79) the aroma was muted and burned. Ted found the body in the small cup light; Ken (81) found it fuller but rough in mouthfeel. Nor did Ken or Ted have much positive to say about flavor: pungent and rough for Ted, burned and sharp for Ken. In milk pleasantly sweet but thin-bodied for Ted; Ken was more positive here, finding that the milk smoothed out the sharply roasty character of the coffee, turning it toward a pleasing fresh leather and a clove-toned spice. The reader who nominated this blend found it "exceptional, that's all."

A coffee seen from the far end of the taste telescope, intriguing but shrunk and diminished. The aroma is lushly sweet with a hint of grapefruit. The cup is sweet as well, but complicated only by an agreeable but simple acidity. Once past the aroma little nuance of any kind. Slightly astringent in the finish.

The roast turns the fruit high-toned and dryly pungent: cedar and spice in the aroma, sweet grapefruit in the cup. As the cup cools the fruit softens toward pear. Fine balance of sweet and dry tones in the cup, though the finish is rather heavily astringent.

The balanced dark roast is so tactful that even some acidity survives. Shimmering inside the dominant roastiness are tantalizing shimmers of flowers, a gentle, generalized fruit, and rounded citrus notes, grapefruit perhaps. A slight astringency in the long, rich finish reduced the rating for me, but other coffee drinkers may find this sensation bracing.

A dark-roast presentation with a splendid aroma: intense, crisply dry and fruity. In the cup, however, the roast dominates, though patient drinkers will feel a sweet, lush fruitiness behind the roasty bitterness. The halo of fruit persists in the cleanly roasty finish.

Medium-bodied but smooth, sweet, chocolaty, with a glint of dry acidity to animate the sweetness. The roast taste is backgrounded and unobtrusive, wrapped in the chocolate-toned sweetness.

Just enough sweetness to make the smoky, burned tones bittersweet and cocoa-like rather than simply bitter. And just enough lightness and lift to keep the burned tones from smothering the palate.

This blend expresses the usual bitter-but-sweet paradox of dark-roast coffees with particular intensity. The sweetness is almost sugary and the burned bitterness dramatically sharp. Not much range, development or weight, but the cup does offer a pleasant tickle of fruit and lavender. The bitterness outlasts the sweetness in the aftertaste.

When hot, understated but pleasantly sweet, with a hint of spicy fruit complicating the mildly burned, pungent tones. The aftertaste is unyieldingly bitter, however, and when the cup cools the coffee lands on the palate with a flat, unrelieved, carbon-toned thud.

A big-bodied darkish blend with hints of sweet fruit that doesn 't quite get off the ground. The heart of the coffee remains sweet and full but rather inert. Perhaps best in the long aftertaste, when the sweet tones are freed of the gritty encumbrances of body and texture.

A dry but lively dark roast with a nutty, spicy twist at its pungently roasty heart. Rather light, roast-attenuated body, but the finish is buoyant, almost effervescent, with a subliminal hint of chocolate.

Dry acidy tones combine nicely with a restrained roasty pungency. Good, deep dimension, but little sweetness to support the deeply tart fruit notes.

Amazingly, behind the dampening effect of the aggressive dark roast a delicate, exquisite floral sweetness survives among the equally delicate charred, pungent notes. Think of a meadow that survived a forest fire.

Pungent and woody out front, with winy, fruity undertones turned toward dry chocolate by the roast. A hint of flowers in the finish. Marred by an overly aggressive roast: Flat, charred tones verging on creosote sit on an otherwise expansive, complex profile.

An unusually full body gives the dominating pungency of this extreme dark roast solidity and substance. Some smoky notes and high-toned sweetness survive the rigors of the roast.

The bittersweet paradox is less intense here than in the Jeremiah's Pick French Roast, with a bit more emphasis on the sweet side of the equation and a hint of dry, pruny fruit. The smoothest body of the eight French roasts I cupped, suggesting that the roast drove fewer fats out of the bean.

A pleasantly charred sweetness, buoyant and almost floral, dominates at first. As the cup cools the sweetness recedes and the bitter side of the dark-roast cup prevails.