The Journey

My wife and I have been coffee drinkers for many years now. We went from Maxwell House to Folgers and eventually ended up on the McDonald's medium roast for many years. That coffee was a nice balance between flavor and price for a long time, but I think we only accepted that because we didn't know what good coffee could be.

An Upgrade

I'm a cigar enthusiast and used to follow a youtube channel called "Should I Smoke This?". The guy was entertaining and eventually started another channel called "Should I Drink This?" which was a coffee review channel. He only rated one coffee a full 10, and that was the Roasterie's Ethiopia Natural, a single origin coffee. Naturally we had to try it.

Ethiopia Natural

This was our first quality coffee experience. We had tried others that I've left out, because none of them made the impact this coffee had on us. I've had several single origin coffees at our local coffee shop and they were always delicious there, but brewing them at home fell short of the in shop experince.

This Ethiopia Natural was different, it was so good it brewed well at home on a drip coffee maker. It had this blueberry note that was consistent every time we brewed it and it was delicious. This became our daily brew at home, and I think that may have ruined it for us. I can't tell for sure if it has just become commonplace, or if the quality and/or flavor have changed over the years, but it does not seem to be the same coffee it was in the beginning.

So we started looking for something new.

Counter Culture

We have been very happy with these Counter Culture single origins we have tried so far. In particular the La Golondrina (Columbia) has been especially good. The Ngarutua (Kenya) is also very good, and the Valle Inca (Cusco, Peru). The Santafe (Columbia) was not our favorite, it was more roasty and acrid with less identifiable flavor tones. I wouldn't throw it out, but we probably won't buy this one again.

The only downside to Counter Culture is the price. At nearly double what we were paying for our Roasterie staple, necessity might dictate these become a weekend treat. I think we would still recommend that any true coffee lover try this brand, it's rare to find so many different coffees this enjoyable.

Author

wcjj.net

BlogDate

2/6/2025

Back to Blog Home