Dominican Republic

This coffee comes from the Dominican Republic - which is not somewhere that immediately springs to mind when you think of coffee. Dom. Rep. normally means coach loads of orange Brits swilling down gallons of all inclusive lager until they're ill, and then complaining when they get home of food poisoning when in-fact it was all self inflicted. But put that image aside for a moment because we now have a new one: as the producer of fragrant and punchy coffee. The raw beans are a very uniform and matt light brown - they're not oily in the least. To be honest they don't inspire confidence to look at. But once ground, these little fellas really let go and have delivered cup after cup of tangy and zesty coffee that perks up even the most dreary of board meetings on a wet Wednesday afternoon. They do them in nice double sized 450g bags too. If I were you I'd get on the link below and try some of this stuff and blow your Dom. Rep. misconceptions away. You can always complain about food poisoning later. 9/10

We got sent these beans randomly by the company that have just recently taken them over as the sole distributor. Lord alone knows where you would be able to pick this up in the UK - but anyway, we've got it and so we're going to review it. First things first - the bag is huge. It's clearly influenced by the Yanks - they don't mess around with any of this 227g European nonsense. They just ram a bag full of the stuff. The next thing is the bean size - again - massive. If you were in Italy you'd be making a poncy tiny espresso from just half a dozen of these bad boys. Taste wise though, this stuff is non-American, thank God. It's full of flavour and very forgiving - you can spoon up the strength as high as you like and you won't do yourself any damage. Every cup came out consistently - and we're rating it at an 8/10 - only really knocking a couple of points off as there's no real quirky-ness of taste.

This coffee has been roasted so lightly and the beans are so light beige that they look like fossilised remains swept up from the floor of Starbuck’s Pompeii branch. Each bean has a lot of “chaff” in the middle too – after we’d ground them we had to put them through a bloody threshing machine. This is not a strong coffee – and you can’t overdo it either. We really spooned this up to the max. it’s a really fruity little coffee – not what we were expecting from a Caribbean coffee at all. It could easily be mistaken for a top-notch Kenyan. Packed full of flavour and with a nice creamy head on it – this really is a good 'un. I can only give it an 8/10 though as it just lacked punch for me.  But I still loved it. What am I saying?  Scrap that…it’s a 9/10.

This was the first one I'd made in a while and je-sus this came out blacker than the Black Hole Of Calcutta. So what's with the delicate looking butterflies on the front of this I wonder? Now, I'm sure I didn't cock-up the brewing process, and this is officially rated a strength 3, so how it ended up a throat puncher I'll never know. But I think I have to face facts: that I over did it and that the strength here, while welcome, is slightly false and it's a really bitter cup that needs an extra tweak of sugar to get it down. I've enjoyed it though - a perfect afternoon pick-me-up. An easy 7/10 for this one. Shame we can only have one cup from the tiny packet.