Volcanica Coffee Review (A Single-Origin Sumatran coffee and Their Low-Acid Blend)
Here at Above Average Coffee we are always on the lookout for exceptional coffee’s to feature so were delighted when Volcanica Coffee reached out and offered us some coffee.
I tasted and tested two of their coffee’s: a delicious single origin Sumatran coffee and their low acid blend which has quickly become our favorite low acid coffee on the market!
Superb coffee all round but we’ll get into the details further down, for now let’s take a look at the company.
Who Are Volcanica
Volcanica Coffee are a coffee roaster based in Atlanta, they specialise in exotic coffee that has been grown in volcanic regions around the world.
They’re an awesome family run business who started their coffee journey as coffee pickers in Costa Rica, now they run a coffee roasters offering over 150 different coffees!
Shipping and Freshness
I am obsessed with freshness when it comes to coffee, and there’s nothing worse than getting a bag of coffee with no roast date and no indication as to how long it’s been sitting on a shelf.
Which is why you’ll love that Volcanica not only put the roast date on the bag but they roast weekly and ship out within one business day.
Shipping is free on orders over $60 to the USA and $6.95 on orders under that. Plus shipping is available to Canada and the rest of the world.
Coffee Perks
There’s also an awesome rewards program that you should definitely sign up for with 2 points for every 1$ spent but you get 300 points just for signing up!
Then you get A $5 coupon for every 500 points you earn. Well worth signing up for before you make an order. Signing up, liking them on facebook and following them on Instagram will give you enough points for a coupon.
Customer Service
Everyone I dealt with at Volcanica was absolutely lovely, and they’ve got a live chat window on the website where you can send a message and you’ll get a response usually within a few hours.
This is absolutely superb customer service, especially for a smaller family run business that sometimes gets lost so that attention and care of the customer is great to see.
Charity Work
Coffee is about caring, caring where it’s grown, caring how it’s roasted and caring about how it’s brewed.
So when a company cares enough to give back to the places where the coffee is grown and poverty levels are often high it’s a good sign.
Volcanica supports charity: water who are on a mission to bring clean safe drinking water to everyone on the plant, so by buying Volcanica Coffee you are helping make a difference to those who need it.
The Tasting
I tested out two of Volcanica’s coffee, the Low Acid Blend (incidentally it’s my new go to morning cup of coffee) and the Sumatra Mandheling Reserve.
I tasted each one using 3 different brew methods to get a feel of the flavors and how it brews up like you would on a normal day.
Leave the cupping to the roasters, you need to know how it’s going to taste first thing in the morning.
Volcanica low acid coffee
AeroPress
I went for a ratio of 16 g of medium-fine ground coffee to 192 g of water, it’s my usual starting point for AeroPress and this was bang on.
I went for the inverted method, again simply because I like it. I don’t believe coffee is a right or wrong process, everyone has their own tastes and preferences and I encourage you to follow yours.
You definitely get a smell of the nuttiness they promise, and the chocolate but it was a much darker smell than I expected, much more like dark chocolate.
When you take a drink it’s much lighter, a really clean and crisp cup of coffee, the chocolatey-ness combines with a sort of citrus taste underneath and it’s beautiful.
The mouthfeel is very light, no bitterness at all, and just a really pleasant experience. This could easily become my new go to morning cup of coffee! Milk chocolate tastes with a light feel and a real depth of flavor. Beautiful.
French Press
I’m not a big user of my French Press, I usually go for a different brew method but after smelling the Low Acid and trying it in the AeroPress I was curious what it would be like with a metal filter.
And it was incredible!
I don’t think I’ve ever tasted such a smooth coffee out of a French Press before. I went for 12g of coarse ground coffee and 204g of water for a 1:17 ratio and brewed for 4 minutes with a stir at the start and a stir at the end.
Way more fruity than the AeroPress was, still with that chocolate underneath and altogether a superb cup. I actually drank some and went “Woah!” out loud because I wasn’t expecting the taste to be anything like that.
Color me impressed, when you buy some I can strongly recommend trying it in the French Press.
Drip Machine
This is my go-to coffee method when guests come round or I’m making for my wife and I. Not too much time spent messing around and the results are always tasty.
And I think it’s how most people enjoy their coffee so I always include it in my coffee reviews.
I go for a 1:18 ratio, it works well for my machine and for making 2 cups of coffee. 27.5g of coffee at a medium grind to 500g of water, with a Melitta Gourmet filter inside.
Again you get a lot of that citrus smell when you first brew, a light and fragrant aroma of coffee goodness.
The flavor definitely isn’t as intense as a manual brew method, which checks out as totally normal, but it’s still a very clean and very tasty cup of coffee.
A lightness about it and it goes down smooth. An easy drinker to be enjoyed at any time of day.
Volcanica Sumatra Mandheling Reserve Coffee
This was a beautiful dark roast to behold, with rich aromas out of the bag, and a consistent color across all the beans. First thing I thought was I have to use this to make espresso.
Espresso
Yup, that’s delicious.
I went for 18g of fine ground coffee and ran the espresso machine for 25 seconds.
Excellent crema on top and much more of the fruity side of the flavors. Quite an unusual flavor which is the main reason I like drinking single-origin coffee!
The flavor sits on the back of your tongue after you’ve drank it with a little bit of acidity which is entirely pleasant, and you get a big sense of the winey aftertaste they mention on the label.
Especially as it cools that winey taste comes in more and more.
I love how diverse coffee can be, giving you flavors that are totally out there all from one tiny bean that gets carefully roasted.
An excellent coffee, I made it into an iced coffee for my wife and she thoroughly enjoyed it
Aeropress
Dark and delicious, I went for the same ratio as I did with the Low Acid coffee and it worked perfectly.
The brown sugar smell is prominent upon the first brew, not with the sugary sweetness but the richness.
More astringent than the low acid it’s got a really deep flavor to it that I love in a dark roast coffee.
A really clean cup and I can definitely get that winey aftertaste they have described on the packet. A bold cup of coffee that will have you with a skip in your step after you drink it. Delicious.
Drip Machine
As I said before, the drip machine is my staple, and my way to tell whether a coffee is “good” or not.
Kind of like the radio test for new music. You produce the whole song then listen to it in the car on the freeway to hear it how your average listener will hear it.
Thankfully this passes the test. Volcania has created an exquisite coffee that’s smooth to drink while also being bold in flavor with a few subtle flavors that are more unusual thrown into the mix.
Every so often you get the red wine essence come through and sometimes the dried fruits come in giving you an almost fruit cake-like experience.
A terrific cup of coffee that’s equal parts an easy drinker and one to be mulled over.
Final Thoughts
This was such a pleasure to review, it’s always a good day at work when I can spend it drinking delicious coffee.
Volcanica is an awesome family-run business supporting great charities and making fantastic coffee, they deserve your business and you should definitely give their coffee a go.
