Three Ships Coffee

Three Ships started in a Virginia Beach garage in 2013, one person roasting small batches before there was a café to sell them in. The café came later. What the roastery sells now is a short list, seven active coffees, five of them single origins and two of them blends, which is the kind of catalog a buyer can read top to bottom in a minute and still find four countries on it.

Ethiopia accounts for two of the singles. Colombia, Costa Rica and Honduras contribute one lot each, so most of the sourcing sits in the Americas with an East African anchor at the brighter end. A decaf is part of the seven.

Blends hold two of the seven slots, or 28 percent of the active list. The rest is single origin. Nothing in the catalog is priced far from anything else in it, and the bags are ten ounces rather than twelve, which is worth knowing before setting the sticker next to a larger bag from another roaster.

Single Origins

Blends

Roast Profile & Flavor Range

Nothing here is dark. Four of the seven active coffees are roasted medium-light and the other three are medium, a two-step range that leaves the roasting less room to hide, because a medium-light coffee shows the quality of its green plainly and there is no dark end of the catalog to send a difficult lot to. Acidity averages medium and body averages medium, close enough to each other that these cups read as balanced rather than tilted. Processing is where the range opens up. Two of the five single origins are washed, and the other three split one apiece across natural, honey and anaerobic fermentation. Prices at the standard ten ounce bag run $21 to $24 with a median of $23, and the full listed spread reaches $25.

What Three Ships Coffee Coffees Tend to Taste Like

Orchard fruit is the recurring theme. Apple appears twice in the tasting notes, once as juice and once as a crisp red apple, and apricot appears twice as well, once on its own and once as apricot tea. Grape is the other fruit pattern, black in one lot and concord in another, which pulls toward the jammy end of fruit rather than the citric end. Sweetness arrives as butterscotch, chocolate cream and graham cracker, notes that describe dessert more than they describe cocoa. One coffee is written up as creamsicle, which is about as literal a summary of the house style as the notes get, orange and cream in a cup with medium acidity and medium body. Citrus does show up. It is not the headline.

Why Buy Three Ships Coffee

• Roasting kept to two steps: Four active coffees are medium-light and three are medium. Nothing is dark.

• Processing does the varying: The five single origins cover washed, natural, honey and anaerobic fermentation, so the range comes from the mill as much as from the roaster.

• Prices stay in one band: Ten ounce bags run $21 to $24. CoffeeByMe lists nothing here above $25.

• Fruit that reads like dessert: Apricot and concord grape sit next to butterscotch and graham cracker. The notes sound less like a lab sheet than a pie.

Is Three Ships Coffee Right for You?

This suits a drinker who wants fruit without sharpness. Acidity and body both sit at medium, the roasting stops at medium, and the flavor vocabulary runs to apple and butterscotch, which together describe a cup that is easy to drink black at eight in the morning and forgiving if the grind is a little off. Espresso drinkers have two blends to work with. Anyone chasing the very light, high-acid end of specialty will find this catalog too settled, and anyone who wants dark roast will not find it here at all, since nothing goes past medium. Seven coffees is also a short bench for a year of subscription boxes.

Frequently Asked Questions