Bird and Bear Coffee

Bird and Bear works out of San Francisco and lists a pop-up on Cole Street on its own site. The catalog behind that counter is shaped like a barbell. Six of its 14 active coffees are roasted light and six are medium-dark or dark. Only two sit in the middle.

Eight of the 14 are single origins and six are blends. The singles come from seven countries, with Colombia appearing twice and one lot each from Burundi, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mexico and Peru. A 16-ounce bag is the standard size here, and the median price for one is $20. Nothing in the catalog passes $25. One coffee is offered without caffeine.

The site says the company was built from the ground up in mid-2020, after close to two decades of its people working in the industry. No further founding detail is stated there. What the catalog adds is a roaster comfortable serving two very different drinkers from one small shelf, without asking either of them to compromise toward the middle.

Single Origins

Blends

Roast Profile & Flavor Range

The roast histogram has a hole in it. Six coffees are light, one is medium-light, one is medium, four are medium-dark and two are dark. That leaves the middle of the scale nearly empty while both ends carry real weight, and it is the clearest structural fact about a catalog this size.

Acidity averages just under the midpoint of a five-point scale and body just over it, which is what a lineup weighted toward darker roasts and blends tends to produce. Processing is conventional. Five of the single origins are washed, one is natural and one is wet-hulled in the Indonesian style. No fermentation program shows up in the data, so the roast rather than the mill is what separates one coffee from the next. Prices run from $20 to $25.

What Bird and Bear Coffee Coffees Tend to Taste Like

The note data leans toward dessert and dairy. Creamy, milk chocolate and vanilla each appear three times, which in a 14-coffee catalog means the theme is not incidental. Rich and bittersweet sit behind them.

Fruit is present but quieter. Cherry appears twice, berries once, and a general fruity impression twice more, all of it reading as red and dark fruit rather than the tropical or citric end of the spectrum. Floral notes turn up twice. Aged rum and agave each appear once, adding a sweet and slightly boozy edge to an otherwise smooth profile. Drinkers who take milk will recognize the dominant register in this catalog on the first sip.

Why Buy Bird and Bear Coffee

• Two catalogs in one: Six coffees are roasted light and six are medium-dark or dark, so the shelf serves opposite preferences without blurring them.

• Priced by the pound: A 16-ounce bag has a median price of $20, and nothing in the catalog reaches $26.

• Comfort notes, counted: CoffeeByMe reads the flavor data across the whole lineup, and dessert notes like vanilla and milk chocolate each land on three of the 14 coffees.

• A small San Francisco shelf: Fourteen coffees from seven countries, sold out of a pop-up counter on Cole Street, split evenly between the two ends of the roast scale.

Is Bird and Bear Coffee Right for You?

This is a good fit for a household where two people disagree about roast. One can drink the light half of the catalog through a filter cone while the other pulls the dark half through an espresso machine, and both are buying 16-ounce bags at $20 to $25.

It works less well for a drinker chasing processing experiments. Five of the seven documented single-origin processes are washed, with no anaerobic or honey lots on the shelf, so the variety here comes from origin and roast instead. Anyone who wants a deep bench of medium roasts will also find the middle of this catalog thin. Two coffees occupy it.

Frequently Asked Questions