La Barba Coffee

La Barba Coffee started in Salt Lake City in 2012 and roasts there still, with a café south of town in Draper. The catalog is small. Twelve coffees are active at the moment, seven single origins and five blends, which puts 42 percent of the lineup on the blend side and gives the espresso and everyday-brewing end of the business more weight than the origin list alone would suggest.

Utah is not the first state that comes to mind for specialty roasting, and the roastery has spent more than a decade making its case from a city ringed by mountains, shipping bags across the country as it goes. Twelve active coffees is a short list. A regular customer could taste the whole thing in a season and come away knowing what the roastery's palate actually is. Nothing in the active catalog is decaf, so the lineup assumes a drinker who wants the caffeine along with the flavor.

Single Origins

Blends

Roast Profile & Flavor Range

Five of the 12 active coffees are roasted light, the largest single group on the histogram. Four sit at medium. One is medium-dark and two are dark, which leaves a thin but real presence at the roastier end, enough that someone who wants a heavier cup is not shut out of the catalog entirely. Acidity and body both average near the middle of a five-point scale, and neither pulls hard in either direction.

Colombia supplies three of the seven single origins. Costa Rica, Ecuador, Kenya and Rwanda each supply one, so the buying covers Latin America and East Africa and stops there. Processing splits evenly, three natural lots and three washed, with one anaerobic or fermented lot alongside them. Prices at 12 ounces, the most common bag size here, run from $17 to $30, with the median at $21.50.

What La Barba Coffee Coffees Tend to Taste Like

Chocolate and nuttiness form the base. Each appears in three of the tasting notes, and together they account for the cocoa-leaning register most of the catalog gets described in. Stone fruit shows up just as often, three times, and that is where the lift comes from.

Past those, the notes get specific and a little playful. Apple and apricot appear, and so do blueberry jam, cherry candy and cherry cola, a run of red and dark fruit descriptors that suggests the natural lots are doing real work in the lineup. One coffee is described as floral, another as bold. With acidity and body both sitting mid-scale, none of it arrives sharp or heavy. The fruit reads as sweetness more than as acid.

Why Buy La Barba Coffee

• Light leaning, medium bodied: Five of 12 active coffees are roasted light, yet acidity and body both average mid-scale. The cup gets lift without going thin.

• Two continents, five countries: Colombia leads with three of seven single origins, and Costa Rica, Ecuador, Kenya and Rwanda fill out the rest.

• A predictable price band: Twelve-ounce bags run $17 to $30, median $21.50. Nothing on the list is priced like a trophy.

• Fruit that reads as candy: Cherry candy and cherry cola both turn up in the tasting notes, which is a description of dessert as much as of coffee.

Is La Barba Coffee Right for You?

Buy here if you want light roasting that has not been stripped of weight. Five of the 12 active coffees land light, acidity averages medium rather than high, and the flavor vocabulary reaches for chocolate and nut before it reaches for fruit. The price band helps too. It runs $17 to $30 at 12 ounces, with no rare-lot tier waiting at the top.

Skip it if you need decaf, since the active catalog has none. Skip it as well if you want a wide origin map. Seven single origins across five countries is a short list, and three of the seven come from Colombia, so anyone hunting a different country every month will run out of room here quickly.

Frequently Asked Questions