Best Medium Roast Coffee Beans

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I WANT the best Medium roast coffee beans!!  We review the top 5 best medium roast coffee beans for flavor, cost, and the opinions of users around the world.

To make the perfectly best medium roast coffee beans, you have to roast them to a “medium” level. This mean the roasting isn’t as long as with a dark roast.  And, typically follows the criteria described on this Wikipedia page.

The longer (darker) the roast of a bean, the further away you get from the original flavor of the bean.  And, the closer you get to tasting the roasting flavor.

Medium roast coffee beans exhibit a lighter color than a dark roast. And, are darker in color than a light roast.

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Many coffee drinkers like a good smooth medium roast. Often the dark roasts exhibit too much of the roasted flavor.

And, the lighter roasts don’t have much of the roasting flavor, but, have more of the bean flavor than the darker roasts.

Perfecting A Medium Roast

A medium roast is defined as roasting up and into the 1st crack of the batch of coffee beans.

There are levels of medium roast.  If you cook at a lower temperature of around 410 °F and remove the coffee beans earlier in the period of 1st crack, this is often referred to as achieving an American Roast.

If you let the temperature rise up to about 426 °F and allow the majority of coffee beans to achieve 1st crack, that is often referred to as a City Roast.

There are many different ways to achieve a high quality medium roast.  In this video, Peet’s talks what they do to achieve their version of Medium.  They put this video out as a promotion of their two medium roasts Café Domingo and Café Solano.  Here is their video:

Our Best Medium Roast Coffee Beans

Here we present the best medium roast coffee beans based on reviews.

We’ve read through the bad reviews first. If something consistently shows up, we’ll let you know about it.

If there are too many bad reviews, we’ll just pass on that product and look for a better one.

If the percentage of folks that describe the “bad” attribute is high enough, we’ll just move on.

So, you can feel comfortable that any of the medium roast coffee beans below have been properly vetted.

1. Equal Exchange Organic Coffee, Mind Body Soul, Whole Bean

Equal Exchange roasts these medium roast coffee beans and proudly states they are “smooth and creamy with chocolate notes”.

The reviews on this coffee bean are very good (4.7 out of 5.0 stars). And, there are enough reviews for this to not be a fluke.

Equal Exchange is really delivering as over 98% of the reviews gave at least 3 out of 5 stars. And, 92% gave it at least 4 stars.

One reviewer who buys for their office stated “crowd pleaser and snob pleaser, all in one bag”.

Another described Equal Exchange Organic Coffee, Mind Body Soul, Whole Bean as “…smooth, rich, with an undertone of dark chocolate”.

One reviewer described this coffee as the best memory on their vacation.

Equal Exchange Organic Coffee is our choice for the best medium roast coffee beans.

2. illy Caffe Normale Whole Bean Coffee

This Italian company illy is very popular in Europe.

While the number of reviews are a little low for our tastes, you don’t often see over 88% of reviewers give 5 out of 5 stars.

With so few negative ratings, we felt that the high percentage (and number) of high ratings was just too good to pass up.

One poster was claiming that in “2013 JAB bought out ILLYs “.

But, we couldn’t find anything online that indicated that the company had been bought out.

We only found this article from Reuters UK in January 2014 that says “Illy said that illycaffe had not been approached by JAB or any other companies and intended to remain a private company focused on organic growth”.

So, we feel that review may be not correct.

If you have info about this sale, please post it in the comments below.

Anyway, we feel the strength of the reviews for illy Caffe Normale Whole Bean Coffee warrants putting this candidate high on our list.

The link we have above is for six cans. If you want to try these second best medium roast coffee beans out for a little cheaper, here’s a link to just two cans.

3. Blue Horse 100% Kona Coffee, Medium Roast, Whole Beans

We’ve reviewed other Blue Horse Kona Coffee beans before.

Blue Horse 100% Kona Coffee, Medium Roast, Whole Beans seems to be one of the crowd favorites.

With 94% giving at least 3 stars. And, reviewer give 4.5 out of 5.0 stars. For several of the negative reviewers, I notice that Blue Horse proactively contacted the reviewers and tried to make the customer happy.

In one review, they even suggested to have them try their darker roast and sent them a free 6 oz. bag.

It says a lot that Blue Horse stands by their beans enough to proactively do things in order to convert an unhappy customer into a happy one.

You don’t find many companies around these days that do that. And, those were in the negative reviews.

In the positive reviews, one “long time” coffee drinker proclaims in their review “The coffee Gods has indeed spoken, and has truly blessed the farm this coffee came from!”.

Blue Horse was a strong candidate for the best medium roast coffee beans, if only for their customer service.  But, we want to focus on what makes a medium roast great, and Blue Horse was just edged out by a nose.

4. Eight O’Clock The Original Whole Bean Coffee

For Eight O’Clock Coffee, The Original is “our oldest recipe and most iconic roast”.

Many of the reviewers have been using this particular brand for many, many years. And, they say they will continue to buy it because it’s so good.

One reviewer talked about their morning cup with “it’s like starting the day with a friend”.

Doing the number crunching, this coffee rate very well. Over 96% give it at least 3 out of 5 stars. And, over 70% give it 5 stars.

Eight O’Clock The Original Whole Beans are Kosher certified. And, the manufacturer describes them as “delivering sweet and fruity notes with a well-balanced finish”.

Many reviewer talk about this coffee perhaps not being as rich or flavorful as some of the higher priced beans (implying that those higher prices beans are something that’s nice for a treat, but not something you can stomach every day).

With The Original, this inexpensive choice seems to be the daily choice of many reviewers.

So, if your looking for the best medium roast coffee beans in a more reasonable price range that you can drink on a regular basis, this product may be the right choice for you.

5. Three Sisters Medium Kicking Horse Coffee, Whole Bean Coffee

Kicking Horse Coffee is a popular coffee bean manufacturer on Amazon (and in general).

On Amazon, Kicking Horse has by far the most reviews.

However, since Amazon combines all of their bean products together, it’s hard to tell which beans are the best, and which have problems.

So, we’ve gone through the hundreds of reviews and here’s what we’ve found specifically for the Three Sisters Medium Kicking Horse Coffee, Whole Bean Coffee medium roast coffee beans product.

Over 82% give this bean at least 4 out of 5 stars. And, almost 68% give it 5 out of 5 stars.

In the negative reviews a couple of those reviewers talked about liking the brew, but the had received a bad lot.  Perhaps there’s a little quality control issue there.

The most recent “bad” review that talked about possible quality control issues was in November of 2013.

There have been many other positive reviews since then. So, recent trends suggest that Kicking Horse has solved their quality control issues.

With the quality control issues, we were very close to removing this product from our list.

But, since Kicking Horse has had other good products, and since there were still many very positive reviews (especially those reviews over the last year), we went ahead and kept it in our list.

Leave us your comments to let us know if this was a mistake!

Medium Roast Coffee Beans Conclusion

As reviews go, these medium roast coffee beans were a “mixed bag” (pardon the pun). The difficult part about weighing coffee reviews, is that many “dark roast” drinkers try a medium roast and think it’s weak.

Other medium roast drinkers try the dark roast and find it too strong. So, there are a lot of reviews that are subjective.

Do You Want the BEST Medium Roast Coffee Beans?

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So, a particular product might end up with a few negative reviews when a coffee drinker “crosses over” outside of their drinking familiarity.

In the end, we we think we were able to find the Best Medium Roast Coffee Beans.  Leave us your comments about your thoughts on any of these products. Or, leave a comment on a product you would have preferred to see on this list.


  2 Responses to “Best Medium Roast Coffee Beans”

  1. I know this site offers quality dependable articles, reviews
    and additional material, is there any other web page which gives these kinds of data in quality?

  2. Thanks Jason. Do let us know which of our featured coffee beans you like the most.

    Emily

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

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