In the very recent past, Brainsport began offering coffee for sale at its store on 10th Street East. I make it a point of buying fair trade coffee from local businesses, so in buying coffee from Brainsport I am holding true to my beliefs.
I picked up a bag of their beans. I should say at the outset because neither the weight nor volume are listed on the package, it's hard to make an educated guess as to whether the coffee is worth buying without your own scale.
Luckily I have a digital scale and was able to ascertain that the bag of whole beans (correcting for the tare weight) I purchased was 115 grams. Given a price of $8.80, this is incredibly expensive coffee.
But before we evaluate it, let's consider the claims made on the bag. First, this is organic coffee. Second, it is from Kenya. Those are the relevant claims. Searching the website listed on the bag, rockpapercoffee.ca, reveals that these coffee beans were roasted here in Saskatchewan.
Ordinarily I'll buy about 300 grams of Organic Fair Trade Ethiopian coffee beans from McQuarrie's Tea & Coffee Merchants for about $12. For comparison's sake, you can buy about 454 grams of Tim Horton's coffee beans for about $7.50 at supermarkets.
For my review I prepared this coffee three times over two days in order to get a real sense of whether or not I might have an even more expensive coffee habit.
Cup #1. To be sure, after adding three tablespoons of coconut milk coffee cream (no sugar... ever), I was able to determine that, in fact, the coffee tastes like an organic fair trade coffee. This is a very good sign. Generally speaking I really dislike vegan coffee cream options, but with this blend of coffee it actually tasted okay. Still, it's no better than the fair trade coffee I usually get.
Cup #2: Prepared "Bulletproof" style with 15ml of MCT Oil, 2 tablespoons of unsalted grass-fed butter, blended for 30 seconds in a blender. This method produced one of the best cups of bulletproof coffee I have ever had. I'm not sure exactly why this particular bean produces such a great cup of bulletproof coffee. Could it be how it was roasted? Maybe it's the quality of nutrients in the soil where this coffee was grown?
Cup #3: Prepared with three tablespoons of 18% cream. This was a good cup of coffee, but was it worth the cost? Well, I'll defer that question.
At any rate, I think the cost of $8.80 (that's after GST is assessed) makes this a little too rich for my blood, though I'm sure I'll buy a few more of these from time to time. The coffee isn't bad, and it's always a good thing to support local businesses. I love the idea of offering Kenyan coffee!
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