Now this is a coffee to be reckoned with.

Dusky, smoky, it has a dark oak flavor with a nice sharp spike of acidity, with a hint of chocolate, and more powerfully, caramel.  It leaves the palate with a almost citrusy tanginess.

This is a bold gourmet "wake-up!" coffee if there ever was one.   This is a coffee to start the day when you have something extra-important that you have to be wide awake for, and you want to be sharp and in a good mood.

Yes, that is what this coffee is about.  Good, strong, delicious, important.

Buddy Brew roasts their coffees by hand in small batches, order by order, and sends them out in bags hand-labeled in pencil.  This is like having a good friend who knows how to roast coffee beans to perfection, and hands you a package of something extra special every week.  It’s not just business to them, it’s personal.  They love coffee.  They are entrusting it to you.

I’ll tell you what — that’s exactly how it should be.  If you just don’t have time to roast your own, find someone like these guys and get it from them.  It’s the only way.

It just is the only way.

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Kona Luna coffee in just two words:  Mellow and smooth.

I’m not a big fan of Kona beans, because in general they’re just too mellow for my own personal tastes.  But the beans Kona Luna sent are different, somehow.  I would almost say they’re bolder than I’d usually associate with standard Kona, but that’s not quite true.  Maybe it’s that they’re richer, but it’s hard to tell because the coffee is just so smooth, so laid back, it’s hard to pin that quality down.

You’d be hard pressed to find any kind of acidity in this coffee.  I did find a ghost of it but that’s only because I left it steeping longer than usual in my French press.  It’s gentle, relaxed, and mellow.  The taste is coffee, pure coffee, with a light lattice of pecan notes, and maybe — though this is probably just my imagination — a touch of coconut.

I haven’t been to Hawaii since I was 16.  At that point I was not yet a coffee drinker, so as far as the Kona beans go, the trip was lost on me.  I was more attuned to bikinis, surfing, snorkeling, and diving with whales (true story).  Also, since the drinking age there was only 18, and I easily passed for a 19 at the time, it was another entirely different type of "brew" on which I focused.

To sum up, if I were a fan of Kona, I’d be a huge fan of Kona Luna’s coffee.  And even though I’m not, I do like it quite a bit, and heartily recommend it to anyone who’s into the Hawaiian bean.

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"Wow!  Wow.  Oh my God."

This is my actual, unedited reaction to my first sip of this coffee.

Part of it was due to a bit of scalding of my tongue — the rest was a gut reaction to an incredible coffee flavor.

These beans from Buddy Brew Coffee were fired up only 4 days ago — the package features a hand-written date in pencil.  Done in small batches, these were hand-roasted to City +, cooled, bagged, packed in a Priority Mail envelope and sent out post-haste.  And here I am drinking it.

I haven’t had coffee this good in a long, long time.

It’s naturally sweet with very strong chocolate overtones, and a perfect balance of acidity — just enough there to sharpen the flavor, and that’s it.  The body is light, but the flavor is bold, washing across the palate and delivering a light, nutty aftertaste.

Instead of the winey acidic bite of Kenya AA roasts I’ve sampled in the past, this hits me more like an incredible chocolate-coffee liqueur.  I’m totally loving it, and I think the folks at Buddy Brew Coffee are my new favorite coffee roasters.

Look for more from them here over the next few weeks.  I have more beans on the way.

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