El Flamingo Single Origin, Whole Beans, Medium Roast, 100% Arabica Specialty Coffee, 250g Signature Nomad Collection, Gift Box

EDIT once I tried the coffee: Beans smell delicious – chocolatey – whole and ground. Brewed coffee – drip coffee maker – smells smooth and pleasant. Unadulterated brewed coffee (in water-rinsed, but unwashed morning mouth) tastes expectedly bitter – I don’t detect a difference between it and any other coffee - with lingering bitterness on the back and middle of tongue. 1 teaspoon of sugar and 2 teaspoons of plain powdered creamer made it as palatable as any coffee, but I detect no “notes“ of anything. It’s just coffee. Lingering bitterness on back of tongue but not poison because I am fine 12 hours later. Reducing by one star. Still love the tin. ORIGINAL REVIEW: I haven’t actually drunk it yet because I was going to finish the bag of beans I was already on, but since this one arrived unsealed (very disappointing if this were a gift or I were paying full price), I will just finish what’s in the grinder and then try this. I’ve got to say, it is about the prettiest container that ever contained a household staple. I will definitely be holding onto it for other uses regardless of what I think of the coffee produced by the beans. I am no connoisseur or snob - I’ve only been drinking coffee for 15 years and I drink it with cream (2) and sugar (1), but I have had “bad” (burnt, bitter, stale) coffee and I have had good (smooth) coffee, so take my edited review once I’ve tasted this for what it’s worth.

As a gift for my sister, I chose this brand because of how much I enjoyed it when it was introduced to me. As a fan of pour over style coffee these beans make for a tasty experience. The beautiful box it comes in is easily repurposed for storing something fun in afterwards.

The container for the coffee beans is beautiful. The coffee has a very smooth flavor, with a slight taste of dark chocolate. It’s a nice medium roast that doesn’t taste burnt. Highly recommended, although high quality coffee can be a little pricey.

Bacha has a large selection of coffee beans, so I decided to try El Flamingo. The package arrived with a cellophane wrapper, but that was all. Seems like it should have something sealed better to preserve the coffee inside. The box is pretty neat, and you have to push the little gold button on the front to open it. Once I opened it, there were beans on top of the black "lid", which is held in place by a small sticker on one side. Since some of the beans made their way above that during transit, it told me even more that this coffee is not packaged to preserve freshness. I poured the beans into my automatic espresso machine and tried it out. I've been on a latte kick lately so my drinks are half milk/cream and half coffee. This coffee tasted fine in my latte, it was good but nothing earth shattering. I then tried a plain espresso with a little heavy cream. It was just okay for my tastes. I've found that I prefer the taste of a dark roast and this is a medium roast, so that probably factored into it. Overall, I think this coffee is over-priced (currently $42 for about 0.5 pounds). Sure you get a cool box, but if you don't drink it all right away, it's not likely to stay fresh. There are better, cheaper options out there.

I chose to order the 'El Flamingo Coffee' as the description stated it is organic. Upon receiving the item, there is nothing on the packaging to indicate that is true. Not a great start. Upon opening the coffee beans I couldn't help but notice there is no smell... unless I literally place my nose right up against the container. Maybe the batch I received is older or the seal was not working prior to shipping? I did notice that the insert was not in place upon opening. However, I am able to secure it on where it takes pretty good force to get it off. Not sure how that happened. I ground the beans to a medium-fine size and used filtered water making one individual 12oz cup of coffee. For reference, I drink my coffee black. This coffee is listed as medium, but I found it very mild in flavor. Even so, I did find that it does what coffee is supposed to do and gave me a bit of a jump-start to my morning. Very easy to drink quickly... not sure if that is good or bad, LOL! At the time of ordering this was priced at $42. I can appreciate that this is a single source coffee. However, not being organic and not having a 'wow' factor while drinking... well, I can not say that it would be worth that price point. As a daily coffee drinker, I am sorry to say that I was underwhelmed...