Most Harris varieties on sale.
Harris Smooth Coffee Beans have rounded smooth taste with a delicate aroma. These coffee beans will give you the buzz to start each day right. Perfect for enjoying with friends, family and colleague.
As a budget brew, how does this compare with the Aldi medium roast?
I havent tried Harris coffee but I do love the Aldi variety of beans.
Aldi medium is actually really nice!
I know, it's pretty much my standard now. If it ain't broke, don't fix I guess :-)
The Peru and Ethiopia ones are nice too for a bit more $
Honduras and Columbia varieties were on special couple of months ago and are nice too. I have found ALDI coffee to be one of the best for my taste. I use coffee to flavour the milk & don't like it bitter. I once bought Harris Extra strong and found it very bitter, had to put a drop of vanilla make it palatable.
@chamaniw: IIRC those two were a bit more bitter than Ethiopia and Peru, but its been a while since i've had them
Aldi dark roast is better than the Harris very strong
Cheers! Love the Aldi dark roast and was going to pull the trigger on this
LOVE ma Aldi medium but this is $2 CHEEEPER!!!
Saving $2 over 1 month, hope you find taste same!
this is one of those situations where the $2 extra is worth it.
CONCUR. But this is OZB. We want to save yet waste money on eneloops.
I buy the aldi dark roast and bought the haris strong (green bag). They're similar I guess, they're not top quality beasn but more than servicable without too much astringency. I assume the medium would be the same but more citrus like tones. for $9 a bag, ordered some more (halfway though a bag at the moment) as it's fine for a morning coffee before work!
In the past when I have bought Harris coffee it was pretty average. Aldi beans are the best non-specialty cheap supermarket beans IMO.
I would rate Aldi Medium roast much higher than Harris, once you dial in your brew it can make a great cup and ended up being my daily choice.
At least from my experience it seems you are more likely to get fresher beans with Aldi as well compared to Harris (at least when purchased from super markets).
What are the settings for Aldi Med Roast on your Breville Barrista Express? (A shot in the dark, I'm feeling lucky here)
I don't have that machine but know someone who owns the Barista Express and asked what their settings are.
They grind on number 6 but use a double wall filter to bring up the pressure to around the 12 o'clock position should give a fruity flavor.
Personally I do double shots with a slightly longer extraction which removes some of the fruity elements so it's worth experimenting to find the right taste/strength for you.
I grind it at 12 (Smart grind) and single cup filter ( OG accessories). Pressure comes to 7-9.
@Naigrabzo: I find it hard to get the right extraction time. I grind it at 8 and set the amount dial to 3 o'clock for the single unpressurised basket or 2x single rounds at 1 o'clock for the double unpressurised basket, tamping halfway - I don't use "double" button as the mess is terrible.
Ungodly, I'm also done weighing the beans each time - too much work and I figured the above.
I went to Veneziano Cafe/roaster ( Richmond, Melb) couple of times and found them roasting and packaging the Aldi beans (Lazzio?). It's a good cafe so I assume Aldi's is actually decent (never tried their beans).
It does not mean they are roasting the same beans to Aldi thou… but it is positive to know.
Yeah I don't think same beans but using same facilities and same employees is a good sign indeed.
thanks Op. Got the very strong intense & rich.
Thanx Op.. i got the same… cant handle weak coffee..
Also enjoying the Aldi dark beans variety..
when is the Roasted date? if it doesnt' have a roasted date its old beans
Always buy beans that have a roasted date on it….. not an expiry date. Most store bought beans have been siting on the shielf for months. and taste horriable compared to freshly roasted beans. All my beans I get are roasted on the same day they ship which means its fresh and tastes amazing.
I bet you pay 3 times as much for them though. For a cheap coffee at home these beans are fine..
I may well be wrong but I interpret the Best Before date to be 1 year past the roast date on my Coles beans. So the current 1KG bag has Best Before 4/2/23 - so I am interpreting they were roasted on 4/2/22 - which I consider pretty good for $12.
It is not 1 year, more likely 15 or 18 month
I don't think it is with the Coles beans, I am pretty sure it's 12 months, when I have bought Coles beans in the past, if they still had 11+ months on the used by dates they still taste fresh. Have also never seen a bag with over 12 months remaining on the use by date.
I am in no way a coffee-phile like you guys, but as far as cheap, store-bought beans go I really like the Harris Smooth. Very creamy, simple, and delicious. But obviously take this with the amount of salt in the Don Juan Pond.
how old it is? does it have a roast date?
Nope I can't recall seeing a roast date on the bag I got from Amazon.
Beans looked old.
No oils on the beans
thought so thats why they are cheap
The darker the roast the more oil. For a medium roast I wouldn't expect shiny beans
I bought this last week at full price ($14.xx s&s)
They are not good beans. Very light on flavour.
I much prefer Lavazza beans (the gold colour bag) and pretty much any other beans I've used have been better than Harris.
I'm using a Breville barista express to make my coffee and have to set a very fine grind (#4 and internal burr tightened) and high dose (about 2/3 to max) to get a drinkable pour on these
Wouldn't recommend them even for only $9
I've always found Lavazza beans to be extremely stale and roasted like someone hated your tongue. No finesse in flavours, just all out bitter. Could never tune the settings to get anything useful out of the beans.
I've gone from very expensive roasted beans/ ground coffee to Dunkin Donuts blend from Amazon US, love it
Worth a try
https://www.amazon.com.au/Dunkin-Donuts-Original-Ground-Coff…
I've been through quite a few brands of coffee and this is my personal opinion only from my limited home brewing experience.
Roast date is important.
Anything more than a month starts to go off and lose it's crema. I avoid that like the plague.
Whole beans only.
Adjusting your grinds to get the right amount of extraction and time. Coffee extraction has a bit of a profile, and it's important to tune your grinds to suit your tastebud's. By using pre-ground, your only way of adjusting the pressure and extraction time is temp pressure and amount of ground coffee. Not ideal as it then changes the extraction profile which means the flavours changes. Significantly harder to get that bitter-sweet balance taste in an espresso.
With coffee, there are so many variables to adjust to hit the right notes, buying pre-ground, you lose one area of control.
From very expensive went to Dunkin Donut's coffee - which on that Amazon link is ~ $55/kg?
I wonder how expensive was that previous coffee, if $55/kg is cheap(ish)? :)
NO thanks, ground old coffee shipped from USA at ridicules expensive price, can't see the logic! wonder how you drink or make your coffee! America is known to be one of the worst places for making / having proper coffee.
If it's bitter sounds like you are over extracting them.
I get great flavours without bitterness from them
Horrible beans, would avoid at all costs.
For $9 / Kg, can't expect better than this
But yeah not the best
I agree. Bought some on one of these deals and considered throwing the bag away after a few cups
Terrible
It's horses for courses. These beans (the 'Smooth' version) wouldn't be suitable for espresso machines but for drip/filter coffee, where medium roast really shines, they'll be fine.
just got abit into making coffee, please recommend me a coffee machine under $350 as a beginner (looking at breville duo temp pro atm). will buy a grinder later.
I do like my Sunbeam barista max. Has a built in grinder to boot.
This is my recommendation also.
But worth looking at all of the reviews. Sunbeam machine has built in grinder, can be very cheap if you find a good deal and IMO makes the best coffee in this price bracket. Cons are the grinder is very messy (for me) and machine has reliability issues (although mine has been rock solid for years).
I’d stay start with a breville machine. Here’s a good video and loads of info on this channel:
If you don't get a machine with a grinder, how will you grind beans?
Buying ground beans will be a waste of money
They should get a JX Pro separately
How does it compare to porlex?
@OzFrugie: Porlex has 37 microns between clicks - that's way too inaccurate for espresso. Probably good enough for manual brews eg French press.
JX Pro is 12.5 microns per click and is widely considered to be the best value espresso grinder.
@Fobsessive: Thanks. Why buy manual grinder if for similar price can get something like Breville Smart Grinder Pro?
@OzFrugie: Even a modified Baratza Virtuoso (slight tier above the Breville Smart Geinder Pro) electric grinder does not do the trick for espresso either in step adjustment or in grind quality/consistency at fine levels.
For cheaper than both grinders mentioned above, the JX Pro manual is superior in espresso grinding. Manual is more bang for buck because the manufacturer doesn't face R&D/production costs for electronics.
Source: Reddit and barista forums.
@Fobsessive: thanks for the info.
one thing I dont like doing with manual is it's taking time (and effort!) and also have to clean it afterwards. Do you clean it afterwards each time after making a cup?
@OzFrugie: I enjoy the tactile manual grind. I can do 20g of Airjo Enterprise in 30 seconds without much effort.
0.2g (1%) retention per grind, mostly fines. Very insignificant amount, not essential to brush off.
Breville Bambino plus used to be $361 at TTG commercial, that probably was your best shot, but lately price gone up (currently $500). All coffee machines just had price increase.
Thanks I ordered some strong and 1 of the very strong (will see if any good)
Why S&S doesn't work?
Love this. Great thread here.
It's both wild and wonderful how much variation we have in our choice of preferred beans. Running a stock delonghi la specialista set to default everything (maybe with the grind volume turned slightly down). I really like the strong Harris blend. Have tried Lavazza (no, thanks). fwiw I seek out Genevese when on the roam. Fascinated to see folks obsessed with roast date, never occurred to me before. Something else to worry about, thanks.
Bought two bags of strong. Thanks OP!
You have never seen someone obsessed with date? I've seen people obsessed that their 22g of whole beans only turned into 21.6g of ground beans and therefore their grinder deserved to be thrown away. I've seen people put grounds under a microscope to see how evenly they are ground.
Coffee snobs/obsessives are insane
Have so far only tried Aldi blends and SO beans and lately Airjo and Limebluecoffee.
Am not much of a coffee snob but did notice slight differences which do make me to develop preferences.
Also, noticed that with that the longer the pack has been open, the cream and richness in the brewed coffee goes down. I tend to move the grinder to a finer setting as the opened pack gets older.
I started with Aldi blends but can't see myself going for them again unless that's the only option available. Limeblue is my goto now with Airjo second and Aldi SO my backup.
I tend to believe that if you haven't tried different beans with varying levels of freshness in roasting, you will be happy with whatever it is that you are used to drinking.
You got the right idea.The more time the beans has exposure to the air, the more it will lose its freshness and thus crema.
Put only the required amount in your grinder. EG: 18G in, 18G out. Seal the rest back into your pack.
If you want to take 1 step further, split a kg half into a ziplock and only use the zip lock bag first until you run out, then move onto the rest in the original bag.
not the best but for this price, can't complain.
I also use their ground coffee to make my overnight cold brew and this taste alright
Beans like these are well suited to a cold drip or cold brew. It should quite acceptable made cold.
I recently had the very best coffee I've ever had in my life.. By far.. I just about almost climaxed.
Turns out, it was moccona instant, white with one.
I had just come out of sinus surgery and could smell and taste for the first time in 3years.
That experience is difficult to replicate, but I try by being more mindful and present with my senses.. rather than seeking out the closest roast date.
I bet the nurses were glad you didn't have Seven Seeds coffee. They would still be cleaning up the sticky mess.
Is the experience of trying food and drink like having things for the first time, or do you remember tastes and smells?
The basic smell/taste can be recalled, but not the entire experience.
I had forgotten how tasty grapes can be.. almost seemed chocolatey. it's 3D compared to 2D.
and i'm certain this leads endorphins/happiness etc.
It's probably the nurses climax effect. who doesn't like a nice nurse uniform?
having a sense of smell certainly helps libido… suddenly everyone is more attractive.. the world is.. and it's good to know when my pits stink or my car is starting to smell like a wet dog etc.
HAHA TRU!
Covid can put dampers on smell apparently.
Thanks bought a few bags
Ma man James H might not entirely agree with that description in the title….
Harris are the best 'supermarket' beans by a margin, with exception to Aldi of course. If I buy from supermarket, when I run out of half price local roaster beans, I buy Aldi if I am there or Harris if I am Woolies.
How they compare to Vittoria? Vittoria go some times on sale for $15-18, I used to buy them when I started into coffee but have not use them for long time.
Thanks community for updating the post 🙂
Glad I helped out some folk!
Thanks bought a few
For this price, i'll give them a go. If they're awful, i'll put them in the worm farm :)
Can't be enjoyed with enemies hmm…..
:3
Coles UCC roast date is coded:
Under BEST BEFORE date, look for 5 digit code
ie: 21336, roast date is the 336th day of 2021 (02DEC21)
Use by date is 12months from roast date.
wow you cracked the code?
Nice work - my most recent bag has best before as 4/2/23 and the 5 digit code is 22035. So this bag of beans was only 3 weeks past roast date when I bought it.
So with Subscribe & Save, can you sign up, get the $9 price, then cancel future orders?
yes
Can’t go past these for $7.20 with discounted amazing credit via gift cards.
same price for ground
I rotate between Code Black, St Ali, Five Senses, Padre, Duke, Industry Beans depending on which cafe is on my way from home or work. The prerequisite is they must be roasted within 0.5-1.5 weeks.
My routine:
Weigh, single dose grind, WDT.
21.5g in/ 38g out in 27-35 seconds depending on freshness of coffee
St Ali :/
I bought the St Ali Black Friday deal which was 50% off, 1kg per month for a year, at ~$25 a kg delivered I like it. At full price, not so much.
Maybe have the title as
Harris Coffee 1kg $10 ($9 S&S) + Delivery ($0 with Prime/ $39 Spend) @ Amazon AU