Organic Light Roast Whole Bean Coffee, The Best Espresso Beans from Peru – Fair Trade, Single Origin Mycotoxin & Mold Free Fresh Peruvian Purity | Super Healthy Arabica for Peak Performance – Low Acid

Perfect Coffee Bean
We absolutely love the flavor of these beans. Typically we buy Lavazza beans and decided to try something different . We use them in out drip coffee machine and espresso machine. The flavor is lightly sweet and smooth. Not super bold, it’s just right.

Excellent flavor in the French press
FIRST BAG: Though a light color, very full of flavor. We like it brewed in the French press as opposed to the drip style. I wanted to try light roast due to it is supposedly healthier than the more roasted beans. Got it for the mold and toxin free aspect too. The bag came not vacuumed packed, just sort of flumpsy and folded with the whole beans rattling around in it. I don’t have a digital scale yet, but the little scale I have for the kitchen showed the entire thing including the bag weighed 10 oz. No one-way valve either on this bag. Otherwise seems fine and fresh and I will try again and see if it is consistently good. We don’t have to use much to get good flavor. SECOND BAG: Not as flavorful as the first bag. So, will try one more bag and see how the consistency runs.

Nice flavor
Nice packaging, clean and healthy, flavorful.

Poor quality
This was very poor quality coffee. I would return this without question if returns were allowed, but since it’s a food product returns are not allowed. I’m not trying to be harsh or unfair. This is just my honest feedback.For Christmas, I decided to treat my husband to a Calphalon Temp IQ espresso maker, along with a nice grinder. I also purchased several different types of whole coffee beans for us to grind ourselves so we could sample a selection of high quality coffee. When I saw the ‘Top Shelf’ name, I thought to myself “Great! Just what I’m looking for! Top Shelf? Gotta be good quality.” Or at least I hoped. I paid $15 for a 10 oz bag of beans.When it arrived, we ground up a serving of beans to the right consistency, tamped it with just the right amount of pressure and attempted to pull a shot of espresso with our temp IQ machine. This particular brand of coffee beans pulled the worst shot of espresso I’ve ever had. There was no crema at all, not even a little bit. The lack of crema produced was the first thing that struck me while pulling the shot. I was disappointed by this because the crema is my favorite part and what I look for in a good quality espresso shot, however I still held out hope that the overall result would be enjoyable.The taste of the coffee was very bitter, overpowering, and not enjoyable at all. We tried to dress it up with cream but to no avail. The taste was shocking. Jarringly bitter.My immediate thought was to give it another try. Maybe something went wrong? So I removed the portafilter from the machine to knock the puck of spent grounds out, reload it and try again with a different grind size. Surprisingly, when I removed the portafilter from the group head, I realized there was no puck of coffee grinds to knock free. The ground coffee left in the portafilter was soupy and watery. It appeared as if most of the ground coffee had dissolved upon contact with water, like instant coffee would? Crazy. I’ve never seen that happen before.I attached a video showing the soupy grind left in the portafilter. I also attached a picture of what a regular puck would look like leftover in the portafilter after pulling a shot with literally any other coffee bean. It should be a literal puck that you can knock out of the portafilter and keep intact in one piece.I was surprised because I always grind beans to this size with optimal results regardless of brand but decided to try again. I immediately changed the size of the grind to be less fine and reloaded, tamped, and pulled another shot. Same story. Shockingly bitter. Removed portafilter and found another soupy, watery mess. Tried again and tamped the ever loving hell out it. Didn’t matter. No matter what I tried, it left a dissolved, watery mess in the portafilter every time.I’ve never had this happen with all the various types of beans I’ve ground. I decided to give this a shot as a regular drip style coffee anyway though. I loaded the reusable keurig cup, loaded it in the good old fashioned keurig machine, and made a cup of good old fashioned coffee. I thought for sure it would make a good cup, right? Maybe it’s just not the right type of bean for espresso, right? Wrong. Overly bitter, most unpleasant cup of coffee I’ve had in quite some time. Definitely ranks in the top 3 worst coffees I’ve tried. Even dressing it up with a variety of creamers and cream couldn’t make this an enjoyable cup.This is a coffee choice for someone suffering from masochism, lol. Someone who wants to go thru all the trouble of spending too much money on a low quality bean, waiting to receive it in the mail, grinding it, preparing it and going thru all that effort just to end up with an insufferable result and inducing a headache. I know that is harsh, lol. But it is deserved.I really tried so hard to find a saving grace in this. Tried to find any inkling of a hint of the advertised notes of brown sugar, dark chocolate or Brazil nut.. or really anything pleasant for that matter. Just to be clear, I love dark robust roasts but this is not it. Very poorly done, low quality bean producing a result worse than you’d expect from an instant coffee.After experimenting with this bean and being disappointed, I started reading the package. All of the writing on the bag raises more alarm bells, imho. It just reeks of some rando social media brand trying to cash in on their following with some random product. We have seen all the influencers do it in the beauty space, supplement industry, and really all the industries if you really think about it. The bag says all the right things.. all the talk of their “stoic belief” that the “mentality of excellence” means to control what you can control and make peace with the outcome.. that “you get out what you put in” so put your best forward and you’ll always end with a “wildly desirable outcome”. They make mention of “mycotoxins” being present in almost all “sub-optimal coffee” and talk about their “obsession for elite performance”.Listed underneath all those PR marketing paragraphs? “INGREDIENT: COFFEE”.That’s it. No mention of the type of coffee bean sourced, or its origin, let alone any mention of single or multiple origin. Fine, whatever. No mention of origin, but can’t even disclose the type of bean used? Yeah, because they probably don’t even know. They probably are sourcing mass produced low quality beans from the cheapest, easiest to work with vendor they could find. It certainly tastes as though this is what they are doing.Upon further examination of the bag, I noticed at the very bottom of the bag it says “TOPSHELFGRIND.CRYPTO / THE OFFICIAL COFFEE OF THE METAVERSE”What does that even mean? Who even dubbed them the official anything of anything, let alone the official coffee of a digital universe? I googled.. didn’t find much outside of their own marketing.. also found a lot of other brands claiming to be the official coffee of the metaverse too.. maybe the metaverse is the market they should stick to.. an all digital world where no one can actually physically taste the coffee they produce smh lol.The actual coffee produced by these beans was awful quality but all the weird stuff on the bag makes it all even more questionable. Looks like a money grab if you ask me.If you want an excellent quality coffee bean at an affordable price which will also pull some amazing shots of espresso, I highly suggest you try the Lavazza brand whole bean. I love the Lavazza Super Crema and the Lavazza 100% arabica Italiano medium roast. They make incredible coffee, whether it is drip style, French press, Cuban or espresso.I really wanted to like this coffee and truly gave it an earnest effort but it was all bad, unfortunately.