Luxembourg Coffee Buying Guide: How to buy supermarket coffee cheap and not get disappointed

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https://preview.redd.it/qis45ta3r5za1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=27ef30493343762c9ba5f268113c8d8135815b2b

**Firstly, what you need to get a good cup of coffee at home?**

1. Nice Fresh (this is important) coffee beans
2. A Coffee Grinder (or to grind it at the shop which is not the best but will do)
3. A proper device to brew the coffee

So, you have a Moka Pot, an Espresso-machine, a Pour-over-type brewer (Hario, Kalita or any other dripper) and want to get a nice cup of coffee in the morning but you need to buy proper and tasty coffee beans in Luxembourg.

**Seems like you have two options:**

1. Buy whatever beans you have in the supermarket close to you and sip it after grimacing and regretting spending money on it.
2. Buy a pack of fresh single origin hipster-roasted beans in one of the local coffeeshops or to order it online. This option would cost you from 11 to 18 Euro per 250 gr. of beans on average.
3. Please, Coffee God if you exist, there should be some third option.

**Long story short:** Yes, there is really good coffee for 6-8 Euro per 250 gr.

**Short story long:**

I wanted to find out if it is even possible to find there good coffee but cheaper than in a hipster coffeeshop. It ended quite well, I found coffee in a supermarket that is on par with or even better than half of the roasted beans available in local (or even top EU) coffeeshops but at a half price.

**What are the criteria of good coffee beans for me?**

1. 100% Arabica
2. Light or medium roast (without dark veins or smudges on the beans)
3. Roasted not more than 4 weeks from the buying date
4. I prefer Kenia, Tanzania, Columbia, Costa-Rica for pour-over, and Ethiopia, Costa-Rica or Columbia for espresso. Brasil, Asia, Blends usually taste too harsh for me.
5. The higher grade the coffee the better (the more uniform bean size the better, the less bean defects the better)
6. The more uniform the roast the better (the more uniform the bean colour the better)
7. The cleaner the beans in the bag the better (no husk and peel, no stones, no bean debris)
8. The taste: different people like different aromas and tastes in coffee, but for me it should not be too sour, it should have syropy sweet body (not to be too watery) and should not have any harsh aftertaste.

There are usually 3 types of coffee at the shelves of a supermarket:

1. **Large commercial roasters** (Julius Meinl and similar). They usually fill up the shelves with overall the same product in different packages, which lies on the shelves for months or even years. The coffee of this category usually tastes like regular coffee you get at a gas stations or a kebab joint. This coffee is miles away from what you used to get in a hipster coffeeshop.
2. **Medium local roasters.** It is difficult to compete with the large roasters for this type of roasters, so the main advantage of a product from this category is that the coffee is usually fresher than from a large roaster, but still isn\`t good enough for an above average consumer.
3. **Small roasters and coffeeshops.** Beans of this category are rather expensive or the roaster tries to put the cheapest beans possible to the bags to be competitive with roasters of larger scale. Small roasters usually don\`t have the advantages of a large scale business (lower wholesale prices, cheaper logistics, etc), so a small roaster usually cuts the costs to put a bag on a shelf for the same price that results in a worse cup of coffee.

And finally I managed to find a product of its own, which combines the qualities and benefits of all the 3 categories above:

1. It has the resource to buy the best equipment possible being a large company (large roasters, de-stoners, colour-sorting machines, expensive specialists, not just enthusiasts, good logistics, etc)
2. Provide fresh enough coffee for supermarket shelves
3. Source and choose good and interesting coffees from small farms and sources.

A large company decides to cover a specialty segment of coffee and they did it rather good.

[So here it is, the coffee I would strongly suggest](https://www.dallmayr.com/de/kaffee/roestkunst/). I buy it regularly in Match in Wassebillig, but I believe it is widely available in other stores in Luxemburg.

Quality-wise it beats most of the roasters I know or at the level with such names as The Barn or La Cabra. Maybe not that exquisite selection of coffees and the roast could be too dark for third-wave, but for a supermarket-on-a-shelf-pack-of-coffee it is very-very-very good and really well-priced.

**I would suggest to go with Kenya (8.5 Euro) or Tanzania (7 euro) for pourover.**

Grind it coarsely. Get your water to 94-95 C (you can boil the water and then wait for 3-5 minutes).

Pre-infuse for 30 seconds, than brew it in 1:30-2:00 minutes, maybe 2:30 but not more. It is medium-roasted, on a darker side, so it is extracting really well.

**For espresso you can go with Ethiopia or Papua New Guinea (7 Euro).**

I have two local roasters not far from my home in Rosport, so I\`m planning to visit them someday. I can make pictures or write a couple words about it.

Also I tried almost any coffee from shelves of Match, Auchan, Cactus (Lëtz Coffee, Budai, Mondo Del Cafe etc.) but Roestkunst line by Dallmayr is waaaay better.

Regular Dallmayr commercial coffees are not remarkable at all though.

I would like to write even more about how I tried almost any coffee from the shelf in Match, Auchan, Cactus but was mostly disappointed, but even now it seems like there is too much text.

**TL;DR:**

* [Buy this](https://www.dallmayr.com/de/kaffee/roestkunst/) in Match supermarkets. It is a large company\`s take on smaller hipster roasting activities. And it is rather good for a customer.
* Get a good grinder or grind it in a store
* Do not over-extract it with too hot water (hotter than 95 degrees C) or more than 2:30 minutes of brewing time

By the way, you can write in the comments what type of equipment do you use at home so we all can see how many of us coffee geeks are there.