Three Beans Coffee Review: Whole Foods on a Budget

Typically when you think of Whole Foods grocery stores, you smirk and think, "Whole Paycheck." Today I'm going to tell you that isn't always the case. There's another store out there challenging Whole Foods for the organic/specialty/natural food market - Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's has decent whole bean coffee they offer at a fairly low price. I've reviewed a couple of those coffees in the past. This week I learned Whole Foods offers low priced whole bean coffee as well - Three Beans is the name.

Typically Whole Foods promotes their Allegro Coffee, which is coffee they source and roast.  On my latest trip to the store, I notices the cans of Three Beans. The cans cost $5.99. The typical Allegro Coffee is $14.99-17.99 a bag. Since I have had the canned beans from Trader Joe's, I thought I would look this over.

In this case, I selected the dark roast. Here is the description from the can:

Our Three Beans Coffee is crafted from some of the most loved coffee around. It's them ultra-deep roasted to deliver that famous West Coast roast style many of us have come to love.



Once I opened the can, I saw some dark shiny beans in there. The aroma had a typical smokey dark roast smell. Nothing smelled burnt like some dark roasts do. Then I brewed some via the French Press.

The result? The coffee tastes as smokey as it smells. There is a full bodied flavor. Nothing tea-like in taste. I'm not sure I tasted hints of anything in particular, because the roasting seems to have taken that away from the coffee. On our Cher slapping scale....this is a 9. This coffee WILL wake you up, but won't tell you to "Snap out of it!" The "best by" date listed 11/6/2014, so I will assume this is a relatively fresh batch of coffee. There were cans which had a "best of" date listed as 3 weeks from now. Those were never options. I thought the taste was ok. I could tell this was not the best quality of coffee. Who knows, maybe this is left over beans from when Allegro roasts their coffees.

Still if you are on a budget, I would recommend this. My friend Kris shared a comment a friend of hers made on Facebook about Folgers, and how bad it was. In the note, she said she was going for value. There is no value in bad coffee. If you want to spend less on a decent coffee, I recommend Three Beans Coffee.

To be honest though, the better value is still a pricier, better coffee, when you do the math, you get a lot of value from a $14.99-$17.99 coffee.

Charlie