Are You Paying Too Much For Gourmet Coffee

If you are a real coffee drinker and I mean the kind that is willing to pay a lot of money for good coffee 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 coffee at the Supermarket you are paying way too much. Let me explain just why that is. Most of the Gourmet Coffee 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 Coffee blended with old dried out Mexican Coffee 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 Coffee is the perfect way to sell damaged coffee or half stale coffee & half fresh coffee 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 coffee 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 coffee 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 coffee for instance. Lets say it is a 50% Kona and 50% mixed coffee beans. If you were to taste pure Kona Coffee next to this Blend the pure Kona would standout as the better of the two in smell and taste.

How much is Gourmet Blended coffee 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 coffee and 50% crap then I wouldn't pay more then 50% of the price for the unblended coffee. What about coffee that is not blended? It really depends on where you buy it. Supermarkets don't know what really fresh coffee is, but a private roasting company will.

Gourmet Coffee 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 coffee are in high demand. The higher the demand is for rare coffee the higher the price is as well. I always recommend shopping around, but it can be difficult to find rare coffee.

As a coffee roaster I have a hard time locating good Kona coffee beans, and due to the hurricanes the Jamaican crop has been scarce too. The cost associated with Kona and Jamaican coffee 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.

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By: Don McKay