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reviews Rocketfuelcoffee.com
Robert Angeles, CoffeeTalkee

2-3 weeks ago, I was invited by Lisa Rotenberg of RocketFuelCoffee.com to try some of their coffee. How can I resist? It’s coffee and Lisa is one of my caffeinated Twitter friends talking about coffee every time we are all inside Twitter sphere.

I asked Lisa to send me beans and let me do the grind. Unfortunately, when they arrived, this Texan allergy season came to play and I was one of those unlucky ones who got it. That’s the reason why it took me 3 weeks to do this review. It would be unfair to taste her coffee with something bothering your senses.

Please be reminded that I’m not a professional barista or cupper and I review coffee as a consumer in a language that can easily be understood.

So, what did I receive?

Jamaican Blue Mountain

To give you a background, history of coffee in Jamaica is epic. In 1728, coffee was imported into Jamaica from Martinique. The country was ideal for this cultivation and after 9 years from the day it was introduced, around 83,000 lbs. was exported. The country experienced a lot of rise and fall but eventually was able to remain consistent in the following years. Only coffee grown within the Blue Mountain region, which is in the eastern part of the island, can be called Jamaican Blue Mountain.

After I was done grinding the firs t set of beans, I immediately brewed it using my Keurig Brewer. The first thing I notice about this coffee is that it has a good kick without the strong taste and doesn’t stay too long on your tongue. My senses were delighted because of the variety of flavors that came from every sip, the wonderful strong aroma it brings and yet gives you that light note that will make you smile. You will enjoy how every component of this coffee plays together. Perfect! This is a true mark of a Grade 1 coffee.

Rocket Fuel XXX

This next coffee will startle you with its bright, bursting and slightly strong aroma. It has some aroma characteristics of the Jamaican Blue Mountain yet that slight strong aroma gets in once in awhile. This goes the same with the taste. It has those different flavors and light tones but this time, the kick is there. It’s not really bold but a mixture of the light , colorful and strong side. I would recommend this as the perfect coffee after lunch or during the afternoon where our brain starts begging for a jump-start.

I would like to thank Lisa for giving me the privilege to review her coffee. It was an amazing experience and did love how the flavors played around with my senses. Keep roasting good coffee Lisa and I apologize for the delay. Will I buy these coffee? YES! You should try Rocket Fuel Coffee. It will definitely make you smile.

For more information, please visit RocketFuelCoffee.

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Independent Coffee Review for
Rocketfuelcoffee.com Triple X!

Recently I got in touch with a member of COFFEEFORUMS.COM, coffeeloverlisa aka rocketfuelcoffee.com as she was/is wanting members here to give her beans a try. I asked for something espresso specific and she hasn't covered that base yet, so I went to her site at www.rocketfuelcoffee.com and looked through what she has to offer. I decided on the XXX, which is a blend of three high quality varieties of beans...... Kona, Sumatra and Jamaican Blue. Lisa was very kind to send me out a 5 oz. sample rather quickly, which was packaged nicely in a foil lined pouch and I couldn't wait to open it. The beans smelled quite nice, with no exterior oils and had a great medium roast look, kind of milk chocolate in color.

First ground some on a medium-fine setting and used that for drip, which was quite nice. Lots of body, a little bit of acidity (nice) and a mellow aftertaste. No harshness or bitterness whatsoever. I've only been drinking high quality coffee for 2-3 years now and am just getting to the point of being able to distinguish different notes and I liked what was apparent in this blend for drip. Then onto my favorite... the spro. I pulled 4-5 doubles with it on my Cremina lever machine. It pulled nicely being about 90% crema, but the color/taste was off a bit compared to other espresso specific profiles. They were good shots, but had a bit too much acidity to really come off nicely like you get with darker roasts. The color was a bit lighter as well, but all-in-all better than I expected. To be fair, I have severe allergies and have to take alot of meds, including Benadryl 3-5 times daily, and this can alter my sense of taste. I do give Lisa and her beans two thumbs up. Make sure you try some of her samples if she has anything left. Later!

- Shadow745, Central North Carolina, coffeeforums.com blog member

Hey coffee drinkers, my name is John Newaz, author and operator of www.ThisCoffeeKid.com, a blog about anything and everything coffee. I'm proud to say that as of lately This Coffee Kid.com has become a blogging partner of Rocketfuelcoffee.com. As a result of this partnership, you may see more of me popping in and out of the Rocketfuelcoffee.com Blog. I'll be sharing my thoughts, comments, and ideas about coffee, whether that be Rocketfuelcoffee.com's offerings or coffee in general.

Now I'll take a moment to talk about what it is exactly that attracts me to Rocketfuel. Well actually, I'll take more than a moment, since this is going to be the subject of today's post. Rocketfuelcoffee.com is a prime example of one of my most admired institutions, the microroaster.

If you don't know what that is, it's a person, or company of persons, that source and roast coffees in small high-quality batches, usually to sell to a mail-order crowd. Mail order coffee!? Why would anyone do that when coffee can be found at every grocery store and Starbucks in between. Well, people pay extra for these small batches of coffee for the same reasons I admire Rocketfuelcoffee.com. It's all about the quality.

Imagine you're a home baker. You wake up each morning and work in your small kitchen, today's task is cookies. You weigh out the flour (getting most of it on yourself), inspect the eggs, pour out the milk (the same milk you put in your coffee, so you know its fresh), and do all the little things that bakers do. After your hard work is done, you personally pull out the fresh baked cookies and send them out to a grateful planet. Beautiful isn't it? In the coffee world, this is the microroaster.

Time to get ugly.

In this next scenario your name is Joe, but your friends call you Average. You wake up at 4 in the morning and stumble into your car. After arriving at a factory somewhere out in an Industrial wasteland, you toil for 8 hours shoveling small sad lumps of flour, high fructose corn syrup, and imitation chocolate chips into huge ovens (probably designed by someone with horns) and finally into foil bags and cardboard boxes. Your coworker, whom you've never spoken to before, quickly seals the contraption shut and places it on a conveyor belt shipping out to God-Knows-Who in God-Knows-Where. And do you care about this product? No. Of course not. You're not a baker. You’re Joe, Average Joe.

In the coffee world, this is the commercial roaster. If you think that was more of a big institution bash rather than a comparison of coffee quality, hear me out. I realize that other than the mention of high fructose corn syrup, I spoke very little about the difference in quality between the home baker's cookies and the commercial baker's product. But I remain steadfast in saying that the above example is a question of quality. You see, Rocketfuelcoffee.com and the many other microroasters out there... care. Not that commercial coffee companies don't care, sure they do. They care about profits, their shareholders, the threat of unionizing employees, and company growth. But do they care about coffee? No! Okay, well maybe. I mean let's be honest, there really are some great coffee companies out there, all jests aside. But there are some pretty bad ones too *cough* F*lgers *cough*. But rest assured that it’s no gamble when it comes to microroasting companies: they care about one thing. The coffee, the coffee, the coffee.

Rocketfuelcoffee.com doesn't have shareholders, it doesn't need to meet fiscal quarter estimates, nor do they worry any more about workers starting a union than they probably worry the same about their pet dogs. They care about the coffee, and you know that it's the real deal. Because if they didn't care about the coffee, they'd be in a different business wouldn't they? I think a useful maxim to remember is that Quality is not necessarily a sign of Care. But Care is always a sign of Quality. Catchy isn't it? Fortune cookies don't write themselves. But seriously, the questions of individual care, devotion, and passion for coffee is why I admire the small coffee businesses of America. They are truly inspirations for stepping into a market that's full of big corporate bullies.

I'm 100% confident that there will always be a place for small businesses like Rocketfuel. After all, that cute little diner down the street is just as small as Rocketfuel, and Denny's is just as big as Starbucks, but I don't see that diner flinching.. So more power to you Rocketfuelcoffee.com, and keep that coffee coming. It's a thirsty world out there.

Happy Brewing,
John Newaz
www.thiscoffeekid.com