I used to spend 20 minutes of every grocery run standing slack-jawed in the coffee aisle trying to find a good brand that sold pre-ground coffee in the right quantities for my needs, or browsing pages and pages of Amazon listings looking for coffee after I realized that the last one one I ordered was now only available from a third party seller for $137.
You know what? There are only so many decisions one can make in a day. I have to go to work, tend to my interpersonal relationships, feed my pets, decide what clothes I’m going to wear, call my parents. The process of buying coffee was not filling me with any particular joy, so I’ve effectively taken that decision off my plate with Amazon’s house brand.
Between my wife and I, we make a new batch of cold brew every 5 to 7 days with our beloved OXO Cold Brew Coffee Maker, so the 10 ounces of coffee that the OXO recommends don’t necessarily come cheap, and discovering that I was out of coffee between grocery trips was a pain. But a few months ago, I saw that Amazon was running a great coupon on a three-pack of 12 ounce bags of AmazonFresh ground coffee, and I figured why not give it a shot for about $4 per bag? Turns out, it was cheap, easy, and good enough to become the only coffee I’ve purchased over the last few months.
These days, I always buy at least three bags at a time (sometimes trying out different flavors, though Go For the Bold dark roast has been my favorite), and just dump a whole pouch into the OXO, since I figure 12 ounces is close enough to 10. As soon as I start brewing the last bag in my pantry, I pull up the Amazon app and order some more. Or, if I’m feeling lazy, I’ll even ask Alexa to “reorder coffee.” This is literally the only situation in which I’ll ask Alexa to order anything for me, but it’s admittedly quite convenient to do as I’m getting my breakfast ready in the morning and gearing up for a hard day of blogging.
Is this the best coffee I could buy? Almost surely not. Should I be grinding—or even roasting—my own beans for optimal flavor and freshness? Absolutely. Do I care? Not really, at this point.
AmazonFresh coffee tastes pretty darn good as cold brew, it comes in pouches that don’t require me to measure anything, it’s always in stock, it’s always affordable, and it always arrives before I empty my last precious carafe. My cold brew journey was long and winding, but I think it ended in a fine place.