

For best flavor, I say best to use this up fairly quickly, say within a two weeks after opening the bag, or in a pinch freeze some. For Fair Trade beans, that’s not bad at all. A 13 oz bag of the Sumatra Coffee goes for $8.99. Or you brew doing drip or pour over, I still say mixing some of this into your lighter beans, will make a good and slightly more intense coffee for drip and pour over brewers. While great as is, sometimes I will make my own custom blend of light and dark beans using this Sumatran with some lighter beans like the excellent TJ’s Azmari BUNNI Afro-Latin coffee to come up with a wonderful blend of both light and dark beans from Latin, African and Asian countries. I also use a little milk with this to make something like old school “ cafe con leche” as this coffee really stands up to and goes well with milk. My brewing method the last few years is using a Moka pot. I think this would be especially good for espresso machine owners as well as Moka pot brewers, like yours truly now. You will hopefully grind up your beans just before brewing of course… and all I can tell you is when I do and open up the grinder, the most intense and heavenly coffee smell hits my nostrils! For me the Sumatran is an excellent coffee, one of best coffees that Trader Joe’s has in a dark roast. For this coffee I think the roast works, perfectly. Nor would I call these “over roasted” myself (hard to trust even this picture, you kind of have to see beans in person really).

I would say this is just south of what some of us coffee lovers might call a French roast? These beans are dark and shiny. Well, coffee roast descriptions vary wildly. This is an intensely flavorful, delicious coffee, roasted to what TJ’s calls “medium dark”. When you open up the foil pack bag for the first time you will get the most amazing coffee smell. If you are a fan of dark roast, you will probably like this coffee from Trader Joe’s called, “Fair Trade Organic Sumatran”. Our organic and fair trade Sumatra beans are carefully roasted to a medium dark level to reveal smooth earthy flavors with little to almost no acidity.” (from the package) Coffee on this lush island is grown on small farms, where the beans are picked, washed and pulped by hand using the wet hulling process, creating some of the most flavorful and complex beans on the planet. “Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world with volcanic mountains extending the length of Western Sumatra.
