A Nice Cuppa

About a month or so ago, Boca Java ran a promotion for bloggers… agree to sample and blog about their Bloggers Fuel beans, and they’ll send a ‘reviewers’ kit which included some of their blends as well as a nifty mug and baseball cap. The blogger-gimmick is a bit off-putting, but I like cool schwag and never mind trying some new coffee, so I thought I’d give it a go. When the box showed up, I was stunned by the beans I received. I thought there would be a nice little sampling… maybe a quarter pound or so of a couple of their blends. But what I got instead was a jam packed box of 8 different blends, a half pound each… that’s 4 lbs of coffee beans, free! Plus, the hat and cup are really cool. So, with that disclosure in mind… how was the coffee?

Because I’ve gotten a bit finicky about having really, really fresh beans, I’ve only opened one blend so far… the New Media Mavericks “unfiltered truth” blend, a medium roast from the Tarrazu area of Costa Rica. Boca Java marks each bag with the roasted on date, a nice reassurance that the beans are fresh. My particular bag was roasted on May 18th, and vacuumed packed so it preserved its freshness well. The bags also have the cool little air out but not in valve, so you can keep them as air tight as possible once opened. It’s not home roast, but it’s pretty close.

The New Media Mavericks blend makes a nice brew for a latte or Americano, although it’s not a shot I’d just sip. I was able to get a decent crema from my pull, but there’s a bit of a sharp edge that lingers that is better cut with some milk. It may even be better as a drip, but I don’t actually own a drip coffee machine anymore.

There seems to be little information about the origins of the coffee on either the Boca Java or Blogger’s Fuel website, so I have to assume that they are not using Fair Trade coffee. This is unfortunate, but they do help out the community in other ways… for example, donating a percentage of sales to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society as well as sending coffee to our troops.

Will I order it again? Based solely on New Media Mavericks, probably not. It was good, but not great as well as not Fair Trade, which is a big deal for me. But, I’m still looking forward to trying the other blends to see if they are better.