Gold Star Coffee

Have ordered coffee a number of times now from Gold Star. The fast service is amazing! My husband loves Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.
It’s always fun to open the box to see what goodies are with our coffee.
Ordered yesterday delivered today …talk about fresh!

Thanks for the bonus goodies!

Decent coffee, but no WOW factor.

I am giving my honest review with no compensation—this is just my personal experience as a coffee enthusiast, not a coffee reseller or barista.

I really wanted to love this coffee roaster’s products. A friend highly recommended this company and encouraged me to try their coffee. I called Gold Star and the customer service was very friendly and promised 100% satisfaction guarantee. They did not have much info about flavor notes on their website, but the rep encouraged me to give them a try anyhow. Since they are willing to stand by their claim to be the best coffee in the world, I decided to order a variety of coffees and see for myself.

Now as you can see, there was a lot of hype and build up for me prior to my actual experience of the coffee. For the record, I ordered 5 pounds of coffee from different origins. I ordered the following: Jamaican Blue Mountain, Jamaican estate reserve, Kenyan Peaberry, Honduran Macala, Honduran yellow honey prima micro lot, and received a free half pound of café 645.

The coffees arrived very quickly after ordering and were all roasted the day they were shipped, which was impressive. They all had a pleasing aroma, though they were roasted more than I had expected—city roast is on the darker end of “medium”, so you definitely taste and smell and see the evidence of a longer roasting period.

Now that I have tried all five of these coffees several times, I have decided to give my review: these are decent/good products but with no WOW factor for me. I’m honestly sad to say it, as I really wanted to love this roasters products, but I’ve found better fresh coffee beans elsewhere at a lower price point.

Here was my approach to brewing. I used my Hario V60 pour over at 180 degrees Fahrenheit. I used a ratio of 1g coffee to 17g filtered water. I used grind sizes 8 and 12 on my Baratza Encore. (Gold Star says to grind their coffee FINE, which suggests it is closer to an espresso grind size. I tried grinding fine for some brews and also brewed some batches with the recommended pour over grind size of 12, which is a bit coarser.) I also tried some other grind sizes and experimented with different water temperatures.

I agree these coffees are very fresh, and for the most part have a bright finish with very little acidity. However, there was not a lot of distinctive flavor note coming through on any of them. I think this may be due to the city roast, which for me personally is too dark. In my opinion, if I’m going to go to the trouble of ordering a single origin coffee, a lighter roast would provide more direct contact with the intrinsic flavors of the beans and less of the “roasted flavor” that tends to make coffee beans of any origin taste more similar to each other.

I have tried a lot of coffees in my lifetime, and these are good/decent coffees, but do not provide a WOW factor. For me, the best coffee in the world should really impress me, especially when I’m paying between $20-$30 a pound.

Overall, I would say they deserve their reputation as a reputable coffee seller who sells fresh coffee, but I have a discerning palate and was looking for something that would really impress me and sadly did not find it here.

I recently ordered the 6lb set of green beans as a Christmas gift for my husband who has a home roaster. I was so happy to come across Gold Star as an online source for unroasted beans, since we’d lost the two main suppliers we’d been buying from in the Toronto area over the last few years. Gold Star’s selection is fantastic, and the two varieties we’ve tried since Christmas (from Costa Rica and Hawaii) have been outstanding quality. Their customer service is great too – a missing pound in the initial shipment was rectified quickly without hassle, and arrived the next day. I can highly recommend Gold Star for quality beans and service.

Gold Star delivers. Period.
I’ve tried a lot of coffee, a LOT. We’re talking about thousands of pounds of coffee, and nothing beats the value of GS Coffee. Is it the most refined medium-light roast for that “discerning taste”? No. Is it amazing value? 100%. Freshly roasted, delivered within 2 days, and fantastic.

Yes, there are people that will say that another roaster may do a certain origin better – and it’s true, but the thing that can’t match is the quality-to-value ratio.

Kudos to GSC, providing me hundreds of pounds of fresh beans thought the years.

It’s uncommon for 5 star reviews to be so unanimous but GS absolutely lives up to it. I drive outta my way and it’s always worth it. Twice the beans for half the cost and easily twice as good!

I stick to espresso and like a medium roast for what that’s worth.