If you are a real drinker and I mean the kind that is willing to pay a lot of money for good do I have something to tell you. You may be over charged for your coffee. For instance, if you were to buy a bag of Starbucks Gourmet Blend from a local Supermarket for $7.99 per 12 oz bag you might not be getting your money’s worth. If you were to pay over $5.00 per 12 oz bag of any at the Supermarket you are paying way too much. Let me explain just why that is. Most of the Gourmet at the supermarkets is usually a Gourmet Blend. Blended with what you might ask? Exactly! You have no idea what the blend is. Is it fresh Arabian beans blended with stale French Roast? Could it be Galapagos Island blended with old dried out Mexican beans? You can never really tell, but I promise you that if you think for one minute a company won’t try to recoup their loses then you have another thing coming. A Blend is the perfect way to sell damaged or half stale & half fresh combined with out the customer’s knowledge. I am by no means accusing anyone of doing such a thing, but I know it happens.
I have seen blends sell for as much as $14.95 a 12oz bag. The part that makes me laugh is that you never know how much of the is high-grade and how much is low-grade coffee. Yet people believe it is just as good as the unblended coffee. That is to far from the truth. Let’s take the Kona Blended for instance. Lets say it is a 50% Kona and 50% mixed beans. If you were to taste pure Kona next to this Blend the pure Kona would standout as the better of the two in smell and taste. How much is Gourmet Blended really worth? There is a market for just about everything these days and blends are no exceptions. Seeing you are probably pay for 50% good and 50% crap then I wouldn’t pay more then 50% of the price for the unblended coffee.
What about that is not blended? It really depends on where you buy it. Supermarkets don’t know what really fresh is, but a private roasting company will. Gourmet ranges in price from $7.95 a lbs to $48.95 a lbs. Why so much? Because the hard to find and rare coffees like Kona, Jamaican Blue Mountain, and Galapagos Island are in high demand. The higher the demand is for rare the higher the price is as well. I always recommend shopping around, but it can be difficult to find rare coffee. As a roaster I have a hard time locating good Kona beans, and due to the hurricanes the Jamaican crop has been scarce too. The cost associated with Kona and Jamaican is expected to go up even more this year. Just like the inflated price of gasoline we may all have to pay a high price for great coffee.
