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Brand review · 4 min readJames Gourmet Coffee coffee review
What James Gourmet Coffee sells, what it costs against the rest of the market, and who should buy it.
James Gourmet Coffee sells 19 coffees in the UK and the cheapest comes out at 41p a cup, which is less than most of the ground coffee we track. Cheap coffee is easy to find and hard to trust, so the useful question is not whether it is cheap. It is what the range actually contains, and whether the bag doing the heavy lifting is the one you would want.
Short answer
Balanced everyday coffee that suits almost everyone, and it costs very little.
Cheaper than 95% of the ground coffee we track
- Tastes
- Balanced, caramel and chocolate
- Strength
- Medium
- Best for
- Everyday coffee, black or white
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 5/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 5/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 4/5
Cheapest cup£0.41across 19 products
Against the market−42%vs the ground median
Two cups a day£5.71a week, £4.18 less than typical
Largest pack1kg£22.65 per kg
Buy it ifyou finish a 1kg bag inside six weeks
Skip it ifyou are chasing a named farm or origin
What kind of roaster this is
James Gourmet Coffee sells whole bean and ground in the UK, and we track 19 of their coffees, in 1kg.
James Gourmet Coffee is a blender: 79% of the range we can classify is blended rather than sold as a named origin. That is a choice, not a shortcut. A blend can be rebuilt season to season to taste the same, which is what you want if you buy the same coffee every month and would rather it did not move under you. The buying reaches 9 countries across the range, which is a wide book for a brand this size. The roasting spans 5 of our five levels, so there is a genuine choice to make inside the range rather than one house style applied to everything. Every bag we list is a kilo or more, which is what pushes the per-cup figure down and also what makes this a bad fit if you drink slowly, since coffee is past its best four to six weeks after roasting.
Formats and origins
What James Gourmet Coffee sources and sells. Each one is a live filter across every brand we track.
What James Gourmet Coffee coffee costs
The range runs from 41p to 92p a cup across 19 products. That is a 2.3× spread inside a single brand, which is why "is James Gourmet Coffee expensive" is the wrong question; the right one is which bag you pick. The cheapest is Brazil Alianca Estate Coffee Espresso in the 1kg, and the dearest is Costa Rica Volcan Azul SL28 One Roast in the 1kg.
| Product | Format | Size | Per cup | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil Alianca Estate Coffee Espresso | — | 1kg | £0.41 | £22.65 |
| Brazil Alianca Estate Coffee Filter | ground | 1kg | £0.41 | £22.65 |
| Chapin Blend | — | 1kg | £0.43 | £24.00 |
| Brazilian Sítio Maranhão | ground | 1kg | £0.45 | £25.00 |
| Brazilian Vargem Grande Estate Espresso | — | 1kg | £0.45 | £25.00 |
| Caffe’ Naturelle Espresso | — | 1kg | £0.45 | £25.00 |
| Simply Brazil Espresso | — | 1kg | £0.45 | £25.00 |
| Mille Espresso | — | 1kg | £0.45 | £25.00 |
| ORGANIC Progress Blend | — | 1kg | £0.47 | £26.00 |
| Formula 6 Espresso | — | 1kg | £0.47 | £26.00 |
| Burundi Rugembe Hill Lot 17 Filter Roast | ground | 1kg | £0.50 | £28.00 |
| Tanzania Ngila Estate SL28 | ground | 1kg | £0.50 | £28.00 |
Bags themselves run £22.65 to £51.00. Ignore that column. A bigger bag costs more and almost always costs less per cup, which is the only number that follows you home.
The one to buy
If you buy one thing from James Gourmet Coffee, buy Brazil Alianca Estate Coffee Filter. At 41p a cup it comes in around 42% under the median for ground coffee, and that is measured against every brand in our catalogue rather than against James Gourmet Coffee's own list prices. Nothing else in the range gets close on that test.
What that costs over a year
How much coffee do you drink?
- James Gourmet Coffee£0.41 per cup£298
- Typical ground£0.71 per cup, our median£516
At 2 cups a day, James Gourmet Coffee costs £218 less a year than the typical ground coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
How James Gourmet Coffee tastes
We have not tasted James Gourmet Coffee, so we are not going to invent a tasting note. A flavour score we did not earn would be worth less than none, and this section would be the easiest place on the site to quietly make one up. What we can show you is measured: where every coffee in the range sits on our own five-point roast scale, and which origins go into it. Roast is the strongest single predictor of whether a cup arrives bright and fruity or dark and chocolatey, so it is the closest honest answer to what this brand is like to drink.
How James Gourmet Coffee roasts
Every coffee standardised onto our own five-point scale rather than the roaster's. Read these as tendencies: origin, process and how you brew all move the cup.
Who it suits
- People who found something they like and want it to taste the same next year, which is what a blend is for.
- Households getting through real volume. The kilo bags are the whole value case, and they only work if you drink them fresh.
- People who want to choose their own roast rather than take the roaster's word for it, since the range covers 5 of our five levels.
Is it good value?
Our test is simple, and it is the same one we apply to everything: cost per cup against the median for the same format. James Gourmet Coffee clears it comfortably on at least one product, which more brands fail than pass. Worth knowing that the saving is concentrated in the larger bags rather than spread evenly, so buying the small size gives most of it back.
James Gourmet Coffee products we track
Cheapest per cup first, with live prices.
Prices are the last we fetched and can move. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. It never changes the order, which is always cheapest per cup first.
What else to consider
No brand is worth buying without knowing what sits next to it on price. These are the closest ground coffees we track to James Gourmet Coffee, and the comparison hubs will put all of them on the same per-cup basis if you want to go wider.
Coffees priced like James Gourmet Coffee
The closest ground coffees on price per cup, from brands we also track. If one of these is cheaper for the same thing, that is worth knowing before you order.
Compare against the market
Keep reading
PricesJames Gourmet Coffee price guideEvery bag priced per cup and per kilo, with the cheapest route to each one.BrandAll James Gourmet Coffee pricesLive prices on all 19 products, cheapest cup first.CompareEvery ground coffeeAll 483 of them on one per-cup basis, filterable by roast and origin.ReviewCafé Direct reviewThe closest brand to James Gourmet Coffee on price, at 41p a cup.OffersToday's best valueEverything currently priced well under the median for its own format.