Whole bean review · 4 min readby Amazon Brazilian review: a filter bean at a supermarket price
Single origin Brazilian arabica for 23p a cup, in two 500g bags. The published notes promise more than the espresso delivers.
Hazelnut, a little chocolate, mild acidity, smooth and balanced. That's Amazon's own description, and it's a fair account of what a medium-roasted Brazilian arabica usually is. What the label can't tell you is where the coffee works, and the honest answer is a cafetière rather than a portafilter. Get that one decision right and this is a lot of coffee for the money.
Single origin Brazilian arabica at 23p a cup, packed in two 500g bags, and better suited to filter brewing than to espresso.
- Tastes
- Nutty, lightly chocolatey, gentle acidity
- Strength
- Mild to medium
- Best for
- Cafetière and filter
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 5/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 4/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 3/5
Buy it ifYou brew in a cafetière, a filter machine or a pour-over and want a nutty everyday bean.
Skip it ifYou are making lattes and cappuccinos, where this one is repeatedly reported to get lost.
Live prices, sizes and retailers for this coffee sit on its product page. This review is the analysis alongside it. See prices →
Buy this for your cafetière, not your espresso machine
The most useful thing anyone has worked out about this coffee is where it doesn't work. In a cafetière it's balanced and pleasant. In a latte it vanishes. Same beans, same bag, and that gap is the whole decision. So: brewing filter, pour-over or cafetière? This is a genuinely good 23p a cup. Making milk drinks? Buy the House Blend instead, same money, and it's built for the job.
What the label says, and what it leaves out
This is the by Amazon bean with the most published detail, which is faint praise but real. Amazon describes slight acidity over a hazelnut base, chocolate alongside it, and a smooth, balanced profile overall. The rest of the spec matches the others in the range: medium roast, 100% arabica, Rainforest Alliance certified, roasted and packed in Belgium, 3 out of 5 for strength.
| Roast | Medium |
|---|---|
| Beans | 100% arabica, single origin Brazil |
| Published notes | Hazelnut base, chocolate, slight acidity |
| Strength on the label | 3 out of 5 |
| Certification | Rainforest Alliance |
| Roasted and packed | Belgium |
| Pack | Two 500g foil bags, each with a pressure valve |
The pack format is a real advantage over the House Blend kilo, and it's worth a moment. Two sealed 500g bags means the second half of your coffee is still under nitrogen while you're drinking the first half. The flavour fade that dogs the single kilo bag barely gets a look in here, and you don't have to do anything to earn that.
The on-pack storage advice tells you to keep opened beans in the fridge in an airtight container and finish them within three weeks. Refrigerating whole beans runs against standard speciality guidance, because temperature cycling drives condensation into the beans. A sealed, opaque container at room temperature is the safer instruction.
What it tastes like
Straight answer on the evidence: this is the thinnest of the three by Amazon beans for independent feedback, so it gets the smallest claim. The published nutty, chocolatey framing is what a medium-roasted Brazilian arabica normally gives you, and nothing we found flatly contradicts it. That's as far as anyone can honestly take it.
The one substantial hands-on review out there is more equivocal than the label. Dry aroma of dark chocolate with an almost sour edge, and a cup that reads a little flat. It also spots something worth knowing: the roast is even, with no scorching and no broken or charred beans, which is a better quality signal than most of what gets written about supermarket coffee. The beans are small and they look cheap sitting in a hopper. Small isn't the same as badly roasted.
Getting it right, brewer by brewer
In milk-based espresso drinks buyers report it gets buried, which makes sense: a mild Brazilian with gentle acidity has very little to push through steamed milk. Give it a cafetière and a generous dose, around 30g, and the same coffee comes back balanced and pleasant. Dose it meanly and you'll get the flat cup people complain about, so be generous.
- Cafetière and filter: buy it for this. The natural home for the bean and where the nuttiness actually shows up.
- Straight espresso: it works, but there isn't much depth to find. Fine if that's your only machine.
- Milk drinks: don't. This is the weakest use and the one buyers complain about.
- Moka pot: plausible on the published grind chart, but nobody has reported back, so treat it as untested.
What it costs against everything else
23p a cup puts a named single origin at roughly a third of the £0.63 whole bean median. Single origin is normally where you start paying a premium, so getting Brazil printed on the bag for the same money as an anonymous blend is the quiet argument for this one over the House Blend. If you were choosing between them on price alone, there's nothing to choose.
What that costs over a year
- by Amazon Brazilian£0.23 per cup£168
- Typical whole bean£0.63 per cup, our median£460
At 2 cups a day, by Amazon Brazilian costs £292 less a year than the typical whole bean coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
Who should skip it, and what to buy instead
Skip it if your machine is a bean-to-cup pouring lattes all day, because this is the wrong bean for that and its own stablemate does it better. Skip it if you want something dark and syrupy. And skip it if you want a coffee that impresses you rather than one that just does the week. The evidence base here is small enough that nobody should be promising you more than competent.
Three ways out, depending on what pushed you away.
- It's your milk drinks that suffer? by Amazon House Blend, same 23p a cup. It's milder still, but milk is exactly what it was built for.
- You want more acidity and more body? by Amazon Colombian is the one in the range with published notes to that effect, rounded acidity and full body, and it comes as two 500g bags too, so you keep the freshness advantage.
- You liked the Brazilian character but want it sourced better? Grumpy Mule Kick-Ass House Blend is Fairtrade and speciality grade at 24p a cup in the 500g bag. One penny.