Craft Coffee - Three Years Later

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I’ve been drinking coffee from Craft Coffee for more than three years now. My friend Brian got me a six-month subscription to their coffee discovery service. My first shipment of coffee from Craft Coffee is extremely memorable, and it was easily the best coffee I had ever tasted.

Craft Coffee Latte

Even so, I didn’t expect to maintain my subscription past that initial six-month period. I took notes about all the coffees I was drinking, and I even wrote blog posts about each shipment. After drinking eighteen different coffees, I thought I would discover which coffees and roasters were my favorite, so I could start buying all my coffee directly.

The first six months went by quickly, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed the coffee-delivery service. The beans from Craft Coffee didn’t cost more than buying direct from the roasters—in fact, Craft Coffee’s prices were often lower. I was hooked and ready to continue my subscription!

I’ve been drinking free coffee for a long time

Craft Coffee has a refer-a-friend program. When you refer one of your friends, they get a 15% discount and you get a delivery of coffee. When I wrote blog posts talking about my Craft Coffee experiences each month, I included my refer-a-friend code.

To my surprise, people were using that code. It didn’t take long before they were using that code often enough that I couldn’t drink the coffee fast enough!

I believe this disclosure is important. If you use my referral code (“pat1245”), you will get a 15% discount at Craft Coffee, and I will get some free coffee.

Why did I stop writing reviews of each delivery?

It was fun attempting to review coffee for a while, but it quickly got repetitive. There are a lot of topics where I have confidence in my writing abilities, but reviewing food and drink isn’t one of those topics.

Most of the time I felt as though I was constantly saying “This coffee is great!” and “I like it!” These aren’t terribly informative statements.

Then why are you writing about Craft Coffee again?!

Craft Coffee has changed direction since I became a customer. The change happened without me noticing, and it happened a long time ago—two years ago! I didn’t witness the change because they continued to offer their coffee-discovery service to their existing customers.

I still love Craft Coffee, but people making decisions based on my old reviews are using outdated information. I figured it was time to try some of the coffees available through their new service.

A fresh replacement for your daily coffee

Craft Coffee wants to be “a fresh replacement for your daily coffee.” This makes a lot of sense to me—it is exactly how I was using their original coffee discovery service. They have offerings that start as low as $8.99 per 12-oz bag and single-origin beans at $16.99 per 12-oz bag.

A Bag Of Craft Coffee

Their low-end prices are quite competitive with many of the coffees in my local grocery store—right around the price of a 12-oz bag of Peet’s or Dunkin Donuts—so I knew I had to try them out. I placed an order for their lightest roast option in their lowest tier. They call this coffee “Day In The Life.”

I have to admit that I was more than a little worried. I’ve never had much luck making a decent latte with coffee beans from the grocery store in this price range. Would this “Day In The Life” blend even be worth drinking?

I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t something you could compare to my very first cup of Craft Coffee, but it was pretty good! I made triple-shot lattes with nearly half of the bag with the help of my friend Miss Silvia, and I don’t think I pulled a single bad shot. I like to think I’m getting pretty good at making lattes, and these were better than any I’ve had from my local Starbucks.

My wife probably put a quarter of the bag through her Aeropress, and I gave the remainder of the bag to a coffee enthusiast friend. Even he had nice things to say about the “Day In The Life” coffee.

I can’t say it’s comparable to a good single-origin coffee, but it is quite pleasant. If you told me this was the only coffee I could drink for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t even be upset!

Single-origin beans

Since I was pleased with Craft Coffee’s lowest tier, I thought it would be safe to skip the middle tier—if I enjoyed the lowest price offering, I don’t see why I wouldn’t enjoy the rest!

The coffee-delivery service that I’d been grandfathered into seems to ship me blends more often than single-origin beans. Most of my favorite coffees have been single origin, so I moved directly to the single-origin bags of coffee are $19.99.

A Latte and a Bag of Craft Coffee

They sent me a bag of excellent coffee from Columbia. It is difficult to pull a good shot of espresso when using light-roast beans. I’ve lowered the pressure a bit on my Rancilio Silvia, and that helps a lot, but single-origin beans are sometimes a bit tricky still.

The first three or four triple shots I pulled were quite good, but when I finally got it dialed in on the fifth or sixth shot, it was amazing. All sorts of flavors started showing up! This problem is entirely my own fault. Dialing in light-roast espresso shots is difficult, but I’m delighted with the results whenever I manage to pull a perfect shot!

Unbeknownst to me, I actually drank an entire bag of single-origin beans from this tier last month. My friend Brian uses Craft Coffee’s single-origin beans to make 5-gallon batches of nitro cold-brew coffee—it is amazing stuff! He gets his coffee five or six bags at a time, but he did a bad job managing his deliveries. He received a large coffee delivery while he still had more than three gallons of coffee left.

His mistake was good luck for me, because I left his house one day with a couple of bags of [Craft Coffee][cc] from Kenya. By the time I got it, it wasn’t terribly fresh, but it was still delicious!

Should I keep my coffee-discovery plan?

This has been a conundrum for me, and I’ve changed my mind at least twice. In my opinion, a latte made using good, light-roast, single-origin beans is simply amazing. If you’re using an espresso machine, this may be something to think about. If you’re using any other brew method, you can ignore this entire section. Just get the single origin—it is delicious!

Pulling shots with light-roast beans can be tricky. Single-origin beans tend to be even less forgiving. I have adjusted the pressure on my Rancilio Silvia to be one or two bar lower than the usual pressure. This helps a ton, but I still often end up with lots of gushers—especially with single origin!

Top Down Latte

I went through two or three bags of the delicious Columbian single origin. When I pulled a good shot, it was delicious. Unfortunately, the pressure was blasting through the puck more often than I cared for. Every bad pull made me want to switch back to blends.

Then a bag of single origin from Peru showed up at my door. It has the most complicated tasting notes I have ever seen. The first few words describe the coffee as a shape-shifter, and I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment. I don’t think I’ve gotten two lattes that taste the same out of this bag yet, but every shot I’ve pulled has been delicious!

Craft Coffee tells me that the single-origin beans will change roughly every four weeks. I had no trouble pulling shots with the beans from Kenya or Peru. If I have to be careful pulling shots a couple of months every year so I can enjoy these delicious single-origin beans, I’m fine with that. It isn’t much of a price to pay to drink such delicious coffee.

Craft Coffee isn’t the only coffee-subscription service

Craft Coffee was the first service I tried, but I have tasted others. I’ve had some absolutely delicious beans from Angels’ Cup. Their prices are good, their beans are always fantastic, and I highly recommend their service.

I’d be willing to subscribe to Angels’ Cup only for their delicious coffee, but their appeal doesn’t end there. They have an intriguing blind-tasting app for Android and IOS.

Rascal The Cat

Every bag of Craft Coffee comes with a detailed description of the beans. Angels’ Cup leaves all that off and only prints a number on each bag. You drink the coffee and punch the number into the app.

The Angels’ Cup app will ask you questions about the roasting of the beans, how the coffee tastes, and about the aroma. It will let you know how close you got to what the roaster thought about the coffee. Isn’t that neat?

I’m still sticking with Craft Coffee

I am aware that I may have a bias. I haven’t paid for Craft Coffee in years. A surprising number of people find their way to my older Craft Coffee reviews each month, and enough of you fine folks use my coupon code to keep me drinking free coffee. Only just enough to keep me drinking, though. I’m not swimming in coffee beans like some sort of Scrooge McDuck!

I’m excited about this because I enjoy drinking coffee, and it is nice to get something back from this blog. In all these years, no one has left a comment to tell me that I’m an idiot for recommending Craft Coffee. I haven’t gotten any angry emails from people telling me that I wasted their money.

If I’ve steered you wrong, please don’t hesitate to let me know! Leave a comment or send me an email.

Angels’ Cup is cool because it keeps you surprised. Surprise is fun, but I don’t need to be surprised. I need a good cup of coffee every day, and that’s exactly what Craft Coffee gives me. They’re giving me exactly what I want—a fresh cup of coffee every day.

I absolutely do appreciate it if you use my coupon code at Craft Coffee (“pat1245”). As I said earlier, it will save you 15% and earn me a free bag of coffee. If you don’t want to use the coupon, that’s fine. I still think Craft Coffee is worth trying!

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