Reviews for Peet's Coffee & Tea
A straightforward, rather plain coffee. Most complex in the sweet, gently pungent aroma: raisin, cedar, dark chocolate. Sweet-toned but subdued acidity; slightly lean mouthfeel. The attractive aromatics persist but simplify in the cup and finish.
Balanced, quietly rich: orangy citrus and pungent berry, rounded by a caramelly cocoa in aroma and cup. Gentle, complexly expressed acidity; smooth, lightly syrupy mouthfeel. The finish fades rather quickly.
Rich, pungent, grapefruit-like citrus dominates aroma and cup, with dark chocolate, berry and cedar complication. Round, crisp, balanced acidity; leanish mouthfeel. Sweet-toned but drying finish.
Round aroma: roasty, chocolaty and herbal, with soft hints of fruit. Smooth, creamy mouthfeel and flavors of cocoa, cedar, toast, earth, perhaps grapefruit. Long finish, with lingering notes of sweet aromatic wood.
Intense aroma: coffee fruit, roasty nut, molasses, a hint of flowers. In the cup roast-muted acidity, substantial mouthfeel, and a crisp, dense baker's chocolate character with continued hints of molasses, nut and flowers. Simple but richly deep finish.
Distinct musty notes in the aroma read as aromatic wood, black pepper, orange, grapefruit. In the cup medium body but syrupy mouthfeel, with continued musty notes that are more explicit here than in the aroma, with aromatic wood, pepper and raw nut dominating. Simple, sweet, mildly astringent finish.
Lovely aroma: sweet-toned, gently pungent, with distinct floral and complex fruit (banana, plum, orange) notes. In the small cup medium-bodied with a lightly syrupy mouthfeel and crisp, cedary structure; the fruit turns darkly chocolate. Chocolate and orange carry into a slightly heavy finish. In milk balanced, crisp, though the fruit and chocolate doesn't completely soften and bloom.
Very rich, deep, balanced aroma with hints of cedar, orangy fruit and semi-sweet chocolate. Rather fat-bodied in the cup, with continuing hints of flowers, dark chocolate, and a pungent citrus that I read as grapefruit. A distractingly sharp, astringent mouthfeel rounds and softens as the cup cools, but continues to dominate in the finish.
At its best in the aroma: rich, deep, smoky, cedary, with undercurrents of sweet dark chocolate. Crisply bittersweet in the cup, with rich, slightly charred cedar and hints of spice-toned cherry. Sweet and chocolaty in the short finish, though rather sharply astringent in the long.
Big, pungent, flame-born phenols boldly emerge in the dry fragrance. In the hot aroma, lush and mouth-watering double chocolate cake. A dense and chewy coffee with an elegant, silky velvet finish - surprisingly sweet for a coffee pushed to its limits during the roast. (Lindsey Bolger)
The pungently sweet roast dominates, but with a light touch. Shimmers of apple and pear glint in the aroma, flowers and dark chocolate in the cup. The finish is cleanly bittersweet but mildly astringent.
A deep, resonant pungency envelops the Kenya dry wine and tart berry tones, giving them a sexy fresh-sweat twist. This odd, rough-yet-smooth pungency is a Peet's trade mark, and only occasionally found in coffees dark-roasted by competitors. Here it supports without obliterating the citrus and berry freshness of the Kenya.
The bittersweet paradox is less intense here than in the Jeremiah's Pick French Roast, with a bit more emphasis on the sweet side of the equation and a hint of dry, pruny fruit. The smoothest body of the eight French roasts I cupped, suggesting that the roast drove fewer fats out of the bean.
Not much fruit here and lots of rather twisty, smoky carbon. But if you're patient the sweet-pungent Espresso complex emerges behind the carbon, with perhaps a hint of chocolate. The carbon flattens the profile in the finish, but the body is husky and the entire package improves in milk, which as usual ramps up the sweetness and exaggerates the chocolate.
This ingratiating dark roast comes straight at us, forgoing drama and intrigue. Not much Sumatra-style resonance behind its first sweet-pungent impression, but balanced and pleasing.
Hard, high notes surprise in both aroma and cup, persisting into the aftertaste. But if you taste attentively the fundamental, Indonesian matrix of the coffee emerges beneath the sharpness: rich, subtly low-toned, balanced, with some tones that even could be called chocolate. In the first round of cupping the sharp notes seemed to energize the coffee; in the second they just tasted sharp.
The body is full, the taste richly pungent. The carbon tones permeate, having definitively chased the acidity south, but they're rich, complex carbon tones, rather than the thin kind that whine at you from the cup.
