Brandywine does a collaboration for Halloween with Fellow Drops, which is an interesting service from Fellow that promotes one or two high end coffees a week. I’m a sucker for a good special occasion edition, key word being good. Brandywine is the roaster I trust to deliver good, so this is my Halloween week coffee.
This coffee is pretty tame, relatively speaking to my recent fare and Brandywine in general, a pure Ethiopian natural process coffee from the Chelbesa station in Gedeb, reasonably lightly roasted. 15g coffee, 40 second bloom, 250g water total starting around 95 degrees. Brew time was 2.55. Fellow recommends a more coffee heavy recipe, which I’ll try, and I’ll grind a bit finer next time, but my default recipe handled this very well. Just a beautiful, plump Ethiopian coffee. I didn’t get the big red fruit notes mentioned in their listing, but I do get the creamy body and as expected lovely sweetness.
Looking at their website, those coffee prices are more offensive than Stamp Act coffee. This is a definite try before I buy. Especially if your description is “pretty tame”.
Perhaps I’m sheltered. My local roaster is cheaper. And I’m not that far away from calling this place local.
It’s tame in the sense that Brandywine is better known for their coferments or infusions, pretty weird coffee. My most recent posts have also been on weird, heavily manipulated coffees from Luminous and Black and White.
In terms of quality, it’s excellent. People unfamiliar with natural process coffee might find it a little odd, but it’s still very coffee flavored, just more lush.
I’ve put some serious thoughts into what I pay for coffee. I wrote about it at some length in a recent post about Luminous, which is a good bit more costly.
If this is outside what you’d like to pay, I understand. It’s well past the point of diminishing returns.
That said, Brandywine roasts some of the best coffee in the world and I’m drinking it for $1.55 a cup, including the filter. Coffee is a hobby to me. I can afford an extra dollar a day to go from meh to best in the world. My demand is pretty inelastic near this price point; I would pay a lot more than $1.55 a cup and not change my coffee habits at all.
I appreciate the reply. Sounds like it’s worth the try.
If they have a store, I’ll probably add it to my pit stop on a road trip.
Trying it before you buy is very reasonable. I’ve given people coffee similar to what Brandywine does best and gotten blank looks. It doesn’t look like they have an official coffee shop but inevitably near any premium roaster there is a good cafe selling their coffee.
$63 for two pounds of coffee is… steep
2lbs is a hair over 900g. Standard specialty coffee bags are 300g. So $63/2lbs would be about $21/300g. That’s definitely on the lower end of prices for specialty coffee.
What country are you in? In my experience 250g is the standard. Sometimes I see 200g but not that often. I’m in Sweden, but the 250g bags seem to be all over europe.
Canada. 250g does show up from time to time (I’m currently finishing a 250g bag) but 300g is far more common.
that’s expensive? Then you’ll love this one from XLIII
https://xliiicoffee.com/en/product/sukkot-racemosa-2026/
$270 for 250g
It gets a lot steeper. At the tippy top the going rate for the scarcest, most desirable gesha is around $600 a kilo, $250 a pound, give or take.
That equals 123 euros per kg. Which is expensive but not not surprising for high end coffee. It the price can go way higher than that.
I usually pay around 40 USD per pound = 80 EUR per kg for what I would call entry level specialty coffee. I live the nordics btw.
How much is the coffee at your local roasters?
No more than $20 per pound, but perhaps the coffee I drink ain’t all that special.