SK Coffee

Cucumber melon shows up in SK Coffee's tasting notes. So does dandelion. Those descriptors sit on the same shelf as milk chocolate and butter cookies, in a catalog that is otherwise steady rather than strange. The Midwest roaster runs 11 active coffees, and all 11 are single origins. There are no blends at all.

Ten countries are represented across those 11 lots, which means nearly every bag on the shelf comes from a growing country that no other bag on it shares. El Salvador appears twice. Burundi, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, and Rwanda each appear once. Buying that thin across that many origins gives the lineup a rotating quality, where the coffees on offer in one season may share only a country or two with the next. One of the 11 is decaf. Prices at the house 12 ounce size run from $22 to $28, with most bags at $26 and the wider catalog reaching $32.

Single Origins

Roast Profile & Flavor Range

Six of the 11 coffees are roasted medium. Four sit one step lighter at medium-light, and a single lot goes to medium-dark. Nothing is roasted light. Nothing is roasted dark either, so the whole catalog occupies three adjacent steps in the middle of the scale.

Acidity averages medium and body does the same, which tracks with where the roasts land. Eight of the 11 are washed, with two naturals and one honey lot filling out the rest. Washed processing at that share tends to keep fermentation flavors in the background and let the difference between one country and the next read more clearly in the cup, which matters more here than it would in a catalog with repeat origins. Prices sit between $22 and $32 across the shelf.

What SK Coffee Coffees Tend to Taste Like

Chocolate is the one note that repeats. Milk chocolate appears in two coffees, dark chocolate in a third, and chocolate malt sits right next to them. Around that center the notes scatter.

Green apples, clementine, and grapes cover the fruit, all of them crisp rather than jammy. Cucumber melon and cucumber water point somewhere cooler and more vegetal, a register that has nothing to do with roast level and everything to do with how the roaster describes what it tastes. Butter cookies and almond extract fill the bakery corner. Dandelion and a general floral marker handle the herbal one. For a catalog roasted inside such a narrow band, that is a wide spread of descriptors.

Why Buy SK Coffee

• Ten countries in 11 bags: Nearly every coffee comes from a different growing country, so working through the catalog covers a lot of ground quickly.

• Roasts that stay mid-scale: Six medium, four medium-light, one medium-dark. Both ends of the scale go untouched.

• Prices from $22 to $32: Most 12 ounce bags land at $26. CoffeeByMe indexes that band against the other US roasters it lists.

• Notes worth reading twice: Cucumber water and dandelion share a shelf with milk chocolate and butter cookies.

Is SK Coffee Right for You?

SK suits a drinker who wants to taste one country at a time. Eleven coffees and ten countries, with no blends anywhere. If you buy the same espresso blend every month and want it to taste the same in June as it did in January, this is the wrong shelf, because a single origin catalog with almost no repeats inside an origin is going to change under you. Medium and medium-light roasting also means this is not a source for dark, oily beans. Anyone chasing that should look elsewhere. Drinkers who want a Nordic style light roast will find the catalog a half step darker than they like.

Frequently Asked Questions