Huckleberry Roasters

Huckleberry Roasters opened in Denver in 2011 and has roasted there since. Twelve coffees are active, six single origins and six blends. The list is short by design. That even split says something about how the business is built, with the blend bench treated as equal work rather than as the cheap seats behind a single-origin program. A shelf balanced that way means a customer can order twice without ever picking a country.

The buying stays wide for a list this short. Six single origins come from five countries, Ethiopia twice and Colombia, Kenya, Mexico and Uganda once apiece, a map that runs from East Africa to Mexico without doubling up much. Uganda is the outlier on that list. One of the 12 active coffees is decaf, and blends hold half the shelf, so a drinker who never orders a single origin still has six things to work through before repeating.

Single Origins

Blends

Roast Profile & Flavor Range

Nothing here is roasted light and nothing is roasted dark. Five of the 12 active coffees sit at medium-light, five more at medium, and the last two at medium-dark, which means the entire catalog occupies the middle three rungs of a five-point scale and leaves both ends empty. Acidity averages medium and body averages medium, the numerical version of the same idea.

Washed lots account for four of the six single origins, naturals for the other two. Ethiopia is the only country represented twice. Prices at 12 ounces start at $18.50 and reach $37, with the median at $23, so the middle of the shelf is weekday money and the top of the band sits well above it.

What Huckleberry Roasters Coffees Tend to Taste Like

Chocolate runs through this catalog more than anything else. Counting the plain chocolate notes, the dark chocolate ones, the cocoa and the chocolate wafer, some form of it appears seven times across 12 coffees, which makes it the house signature by a clear margin over any other descriptor in the list.

Dark fruit comes second. Blueberry appears twice, with blackberry, black plum, concord grape and a general berry marker filling in around it, a purple-fruit family rather than a citric one. Sweetness arrives as brown sugar, caramel and cream soda, which are soda-fountain words rather than orchard words. Nothing in the top tokens points toward flowers or tea. With acidity sitting mid-scale, the fruit reads as jam instead of as brightness.

Why Buy Huckleberry Roasters

• Everything roasts to the middle: Five coffees at medium-light, five at medium, two at medium-dark. Nothing crosses into light or dark.

• Chocolate seven times over: Chocolate, dark chocolate, cocoa and chocolate wafer together account for seven mentions across a 12-coffee catalog.

• Five countries, six lots: Ethiopia appears twice, and Colombia, Kenya, Mexico and Uganda once apiece.

• Fruit in the purple register: Blueberry, blackberry, black plum and concord grape crowd the tasting notes. The fruit here is jam on toast, not lemon in water.

Is Huckleberry Roasters Right for You?

Order here if you drink chocolate-forward coffee and want it roasted with restraint. The middle is the whole story. Everything lands between medium-light and medium-dark, acidity and body both average medium, and the tasting notes reach for cocoa and dark berry long before they reach for acid, which makes this an easy catalog to buy from without much research.

Look elsewhere if you want a properly light roast, because there is none here, and elsewhere again if you want a heavy dark one. A single decaf option is thin for anyone who drinks mostly decaf. The top of the price band, $37 at 12 ounces, is also a long step up from the $23 median.

Frequently Asked Questions