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Online Coffee Purveyors


kaneel

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Anyone know of a website that sells great coffee. I am in houston and used to buy from cafe maison but i thiunk they went out of bussiness :((

Thanks

I'd recommend Peet's and Sweet Marias as well.

shel

 ... Shel


 

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Until I found someone I liked who roasted his own coffee (and came to my house and taught me to use my Miss Sylvia espresso machine) I found Batdorf and Bronson's coffee excellent. I was not fond of Dancing Goat, but found others I really enjoyed. And they usually have a special blend around Christmas that's delicious.

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You may want to check out Dunn Brothers, which has three Hoston area locations. They roast beans on-site in each store and don't sell coffee more more than three days past the roast date, which appears on each bag of beans. They can roast better than I can at home, so I have been using their beans for several years now.

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It's not usually worthwhile to order roasted coffee by mail. Perhaps for a totally exceptional place like La Colombe -- several of the top restaurants in New York use La Colombe even though La Colombe is in Philadelphia -- it's something worth trying. But if you have a place in town that's roasting coffee competently on premises and not letting it hang around in bins forever (or makes it possible for an enthusiastic customer to get freshly roasted beans regardless), and assuming you aren't willing to roast your own, locally roasted is the way to go.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
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A third vote for La Colombe. I'm lucky enough to be local to them, but the fact that several of the finest restaurants in New York and Las Vegas use their coffee speaks well of the quality. It's really good. We use it at work too (as do most restaurants in Philly) so I get to drink it practically every day. The Nizza blend is my favorite.

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It's not usually worthwhile to order roasted coffee by mail. Perhaps for a totally exceptional place like La Colombe -- several of the top restaurants in New York use La Colombe even though La Colombe is in Philadelphia -- it's something worth trying. But if you have a place in town that's roasting coffee competently on premises and not letting it hang around in bins forever (or makes it possible for an enthusiastic customer to get freshly roasted beans regardless), and assuming you aren't willing to roast your own, locally roasted is the way to go.

I would trust the freshness of Peet's over my local roaster any day of the week. Not to mention, not all locales have a roaster. Roasters in smaller communities (like mine) have more of an issue with turnover than a place like Peets. Since coffee needs to de-gas for at least a day before brewing, getting coffee 2 or 3 days after roasting is not a big deal. At my local guy, I have no idea how long that coffee has been hanging around...

"It's better to burn out than to fade away"-Neil Young

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Anyone know of a website that sells great coffee. I am in houston and used to buy from cafe maison but i thiunk they went out of bussiness :((

Thanks

A fellow roaster of mine is in Houston: Hopson Coffee

Bill's a quality-focused guy who has a nice selection of coffees.

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I would trust the freshness of Peet's over my local roaster any day of the week.

I've done a bunch of traveling where I've been in some small town or another -- places like Gastonia, NC -- for a week at a time, and I've usually been able to suss out a source of fresh coffee for my wife (Blue Coffee Trading Company in the case of Gastonia; really nice place). The strategy is to find the local roaster and engage the people in charge about what and when they roast. Then you just come in at that time and ask for the stuff fresh out of the machine. I've never experienced the slightest bit of resistance -- they're usually just happy to have someone to talk coffee with, who cares enough to want it straight from the roaster. So even if they have bins of week-old stuff sitting around the store, you can still get fresh stuff.

But in Houston, this shouldn't be a challenge at all. Houston is huge. I'd check out the place Richard suggested.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Peet's is fine, I guess. But there's stuff out there that is really over the top outrageous in terms of flavor, freshness and variety. Peet's is a big company, and I love them. But my favorites are...

Espresso Vivace in Seattle. This is for espresso only, but it is amazing.

Stumptown Roasters in Portland.

Intelligentsia and Metropolis in Chicago

Gimme Coffee in Ithaca, NY

Can't recommend any of these enough.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...

I recently became the proud owner of a Rancilio Silvia and Rocky combo - so my newfound appliances have had me searching out some cool sources for beans online.

I've been extremely happy with the coffee from Intellegentsia, in Chicago. They roast and ship the next business day after you place your order. The coffee arrives in 2 days (at least here in NY it does - yammv). The prices are fairly reasonable - pounds are in the $14- $15 range and shipping for my 3 pound order is about $6...comparable prices for high-grade coffee here in NYC are $15 - $20 a pound. Oh, and the coffee's great, too.

There has also been good luck with Terroir Coffee; my beans arrived very quickly, roasted to order as well. Their shipping policy is great - flat rate of $5 for up to 7 items, and their coffee is in the same price range as all of the top stuff.

Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

Tasty Travails - My Blog

My eGullet FoodBog - A Tale of Two Boroughs

Was it you baby...or just a Brilliant Disguise?

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  • 4 months later...

We've been very happy with Alterra Coffee in Milwaukee for years. They roast every morning and ship every afternoon, so you get the freshest beans possible via the mail, I think. Not sure you can order from the website, though; I always call the order in.

Chris Amirault

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