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Coffee Fanatics Unite: Klatch Coffee Review by Jade

Article originally published on CoffeeFanaticsUnite.com

Written by Jade, Coffee Fanatics Unite | January 20, 2021


In case you’re new to my blog, here’s the scoop: In addition to reviewing coffee-brewing products and writing general coffee-education articles, I’m trying all of the coffee subscription services I can find and I’m sharing my reviews with you, to make it easier to find the subscription service that’s perfect for you.

So far, I’ve reviewed Bean Box and Atlas Coffee Club.

Today I’m reviewing Klatch Coffee, and my review is going to be a little different than the ones I’ve done so far.

About Klatch Coffee

Klatch coffee is an award-winning roastery based out of Los Angeles, California, founded in 1993. The company is run by Mike Perry and his family, and they pride themselves on being a family business and on their dedication to finding and roasting the best quality coffee possible. They also focus very heavily on being a socially and economically ethical company, which I absolutely love!

They follow a direct trade model, and Klatch representatives actually travel internationally to work directly with their coffee farmers and check out coffee harvests themselves.

They’re also committed to sustainability and fair pay. They pay 25% more than the market and published fair trade price for many of their coffee beans, which is amazing!

Their company and coffee have won a myriad of awards, including winning the Golden Bean Champion four times, being named the Micro Roaster of the Year by Roast Magazine, being named the ‘#1 Coffee of the Year’ by Coffee Review and winning the title of ‘World’s Best Espresso’ in the World Barista Championship.

The company can be found on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and their website also contains a blog, ‘brew guides’, and a ‘training’ section, which provides information about getting hands-on training at their Southern California locations (which has been put on hold due to the pandemic, but may be available in video format in the future).

You can also find merchandise (like Klatch Coffee cups and apparel), brewing devices, and gear for sale on their website, as well as information on the services they offer, including catering and consulting services.

Their Products

What makes Klatch Coffee’s coffee so different is the way that they roast it. The company’s founder Mike Perry is a chemical engineer, so he has devised a way to roast their beans to their ‘peak of flavor’ – which means that they roast each batch of coffee only to (and not over) the point where it tastes the best and has the most natural flavor.

So, the flavor notes in the description are not added flavors. The flavors listed on the labels are describing the natural flavors that come out when the coffee is roasted to its peak of favor.

Klatch Coffee does offer both a club and a gift coffee subscription service that come with free shipping. The gift subscription service is pretty unique – you can buy someone three, six, or twelve months of Roaster’s Choice Blend, Barista’s Choice Espresso, or Brewer’s Choice Single Origin coffees.

Rather than trying any of their subscription services, I actually tried six different products – four bags of their freshly-roasted coffee and two ‘coffee bags’ – and I’m reviewing those products today.

The design of each regular bag is simple, but aesthetically pleasing, with their name and logo clearly printed on the front. Under the logo is a sticker noting the type of roast, the roast name, the flavor notes you can expect to taste within, and extra descriptions about the roast that range from a typical two-sentence description to information about the region, varietal, and altitude the beans were grown at and the roasting processes used in its creation.

The bags are resealable – which I appreciate, as it helps the beans stay fresh longer – and also contain information on their roasting process and instructions on how best to store, grind, and brew your coffee. It also shows that they’re on social media and gives you the date the coffee was roasted on.

Brazil Fazenda Rainha Natural

This Brazilian medium roast is noted to contain brown sugar, orange, and chocolate flavor notes, and it’s one of the company’s best-selling blends.

I prepared this coffee in a french press, and the brown sugar flavor was the most obvious to me. You could taste the orange, but it was very subtle, and the flavor of chocolate lingered after drinking. It was very pleasant, the flavors complex, and definitely a roast I’d get again.

Overall, it’s a pretty safe blend that I can’t imagine many people would dislike. I see why it sells so well, and I would recommend it to pretty much everyone.

Organic Rainforest Blend

According to the bag, this is a medium-dark roast with flavor notes of dark chocolate, brown sugar, and caramel. The bag also states that this works well as an espresso.

I tried this roast three ways – in a drip coffee maker, in a french press, and in a moka pot, as espresso.

I tried it in a drip coffee pot, first, and the first thing I noticed was that it had a very bold flavor. The flavor notes of caramel and brown sugar were there, but very subtle. I had a harder time detecting any chocolate.

I tried it in a french press next, and the difference was immediately clear – the flavor was much more intense, and the flavor notes were much stronger and more obvious. I could detect the taste of brown sugar and caramel while tasting the actual coffee, but after swallowing, dark chocolate was the thing I could taste – it actually tasted like I had a piece of dark chocolate melting in my mouth. It delicious, and very different from anything I’ve tasted in a coffee before (and I’ve had a lot of coffee).

Lastly, I tried making it in a moka pot as if the beans were espresso beans. The resulting coffee was definitely different than the same roast made via the previous two methods – you definitely couldn’t taste all of the complexities in the roast like you could when it was made with the french press, as those flavors were pretty overwhelmed by bold, dark coffee flavor. This – of course – is exactly what you want with espresso, so, while I wouldn’t necessarily make it that way all the time, I’d have to agree with their claim that it makes good espresso too.

I really liked this roast, and would definitely buy it again. It was definitely the safest flavor of everything I tried, and I can’t imagine anyone disliking it.

Panama Elida Natural Catuai

This roast is a medium-light roast, and boasts raspberry, white chocolate, and bergamot flavor notes. I brewed it in a french press.

This was the most interesting-tasting roast I’d tried at this point. I’m picky about berry-flavored coffee: sometimes I really don’t like it, and sometimes it’s amazing. This one was different, and for a while, I couldn’t decide whether or not I actually liked it.

I couldn’t place what the strongest flavor I tasted was, except that it was not quite lemon. So, I looked up what bergamot is, and it turns out that it’s a sour, super-citrusy fruit. This made a lot of sense, as the description of bergamot’s flavor that I read matched the unknown flavor to a T.

I had a hard time tasting the white chocolate or raspberry beyond the bergamot. It really reminded me of lemon coffee, which some people rave about, but I’ve never been a huge fan of myself, and I decided in the end that this particular roast wasn’t my favorite and was not one I would get again.

However, if you’re a fan of lemon coffee, you’ll probably love this roast. If you don’t know whether or not you like lemon or citrus coffee, I highly recommend trying it coffee before you try this roast, and only getting it if the results of your experiment are positive.

Ethiopia Worka Natural Anerobic Yeast

Yes, you read that right. This coffee is fermented for 72 hours using brewed yeast and cherries, which creates an anaerobic yeast process, making unique, fruity coffee that incorporates the flavor of the fermented cherries.

This is a medium-light roast with flavor notes of chocolate, blackberry, and raspberry, per the bag. Like most of the others, I prepared it in a french press.

Once brewed, the first thing I noticed about it was the way that it smelled, as it gives off a distinctly fruity – somewhat acidic – aroma. After having last sampled the Panama Elida Natural Catuai roast, this aroma had me a bit nervous that I wouldn’t like this very much.

However, I needn’t have been nervous. This roast is undoubtedly one of the most unique ones I’ve ever tried, but it was delicious and delightfully complex.

Interestingly, it tasted very different than it smelled. It was still very fruity, but in a different way than it smelled; there was a slight tartness to the fruit flavor, but no acidity. It had a fruity, berry flavor while in the mouth, but as soon as it’s swallowed, it’s replaced with the same piece-of-chocolate-that-just-melted-in-my-mouth flavor and sensation that the Organic Rainforest Blend has.

I really enjoyed this roast. If you like fruit flavors in your coffee (or you’re picky about it like me), I highly recommend giving this roast a try. However, if you’re really very anti-fruit-and-coffee, then you probably wouldn’t like it.

WBC Steeped Coffee Bag

Chocolate and berry: those are the flavors that this very unique-sounding roast. But what made it even more unique was the form that it came in: this coffee came in a ‘steeped coffee bag’. It largely resembled a tea bag, only bigger, and full of ground coffee instead of tea leaves.

I followed the directions on the back of the bag and dunked and steeped the coffee bag for the recommended amount of time, and then I was ready to try it.

The first thing that caught my attention was how it smelled, since you could smell the berry flavor right away. To my relief, however, the flavor wasn’t overwhelmingly fruity – you could definitely taste the berry, but it was subtle enough to add a bit of complexity.

The chocolate wasn’t as obvious to me – like a lot of the other flavors I’d tried that mentioned having chocolate notes, it was more obvious later, as it lingered in the mouth after taking the drink.

I would recommend the coffee bags for single-cup-of-coffee drinkers, and I would recommend this particular flavor to almost everyone. If you’re vehemently anti-fruity-coffee, there’s a good chance you’d still really like it, though – as I said – you can taste the berry.

Crazy Goat Steeped Coffee Bag

This was another coffee bag, one that had a ‘safer’ flavor profile – that of dark chocolate and coffee, according to the bag.

Despite the unconventional way this coffee was made, the flavor was really good! I could taste more dark chocolate than toffee, but the flavor was still really bold and robust – and super tasty! I definitely recommend this one to everyone!

I loved these coffee bags; they’re so unique! I feel like they would make an incredible substitute for instant coffee – they have all the convenience and speed of instant coffee, but so much better flavor.

Conclusion

Some of Klatch Coffee’s products are a little more expensive than other roasteries and chain companies, but knowing that the reason for the price – that the extra money isn’t going into greedy corporations’ pockets, but instead to finding the highest quality beans, directly to the actual coffee farmers and to creating and maintaining sustainable coffee-growing methods – and that the coffee comes from such high-quality beans makes the price entirely worth it to me.

My favorite things about Klatch Coffee are:

  • The quality, variety, freshness, and unique flavor of their coffee

  • The company’s focus on ethics

  • The resealable bags and super fresh beans!

  • How unique the coffee bags are, and what a great substitute for instant coffee they’d make

It’s also crazy to me that all the flavoring in these coffees was natural, and that there isn’t anything added to them. The flavors are so bold!

My least favorite part of my Klatch Coffee experience was the Panama Elida Natural Cataui roast, to be honest. I mentioned that their products are a bit pricier, which might be a problem for some people, but their pricing seems pretty fair to me. It is gourmet, award-winning coffee, and it doesn’t cost too much more than a typical bag of coffee from a larger roastery.

Plus – as I already mentioned – I think it’s especially reasonable considering and knowing that the reason for the price isn’t greediness on the company’s part, but rather actual fair pricing throughout the growing, shipping, roasting, and selling processes, as well as toward finding the very best beans that are out there.

After this experience, I will undoubtedly be returning to Klatch Coffee for more of their product once I’ve made my round through everything I’m working toward sampling. I love everything they stand for as a company, and their coffee is so delicious!

Article originally published on CoffeeFanaticsUnite.com

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