# Aldi beans?



## Dr Forinor (Jul 30, 2018)

Seen these today, as their weekly specials? Has anyone ever tried beans from there? Experiences?

https://i.imgur.com/fJn9UmE.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/CqfpCQF.jpg


----------



## xxb (Jul 18, 2018)

Never tried them, I personally have never had any good beans from a supermarket.

Place an order with bailies roasters in Belfast and try their beans, I promise you wont regret it. AMAZING coffee.


----------



## Jony (Sep 8, 2017)

If you want Dark, Burnt roast







Dark haha use Coffee Compass they have some good coffee. I am sure a few will be along to say Aldi are good ish. Not for me thanks.


----------



## Dr Forinor (Jul 30, 2018)

louiseb said:


> Never tried them, I personally have never had any good beans from a supermarket.
> 
> Place an order with bailies roasters in Belfast and try their beans, I promise you wont regret it. AMAZING coffee.


Noted, excellent, thank you.



Jony said:


> If you want Dark, Burnt roast
> 
> 
> 
> ...


£3.49 for a 454g bag so I'm not really expecting the best, but since it's the beginning of my coffee journey I don't mind trying the bottom of the ladder.


----------



## Jony (Sep 8, 2017)

It might end very shortly


----------



## Dr Forinor (Jul 30, 2018)

The journey? Or the bottom of the ladder?


----------



## Jony (Sep 8, 2017)

Dr Forinor said:


> The journey? Or the bottom of the ladder?


Both.


----------



## 4085 (Nov 23, 2012)

I think you will find certain Aldi beans have quite a following with many on here. I was given a bag of their Peruvian which was nice and dark and as an emergency bean, it was actually very very good indeed

https://coffeeforums.co.uk/showthread.php?43778-Aldi-Special&highlight=aldi


----------



## Dr Forinor (Jul 30, 2018)

Jony said:


> Both.


I don't anticipate the journey ending any time soon. By nature I like experimenting, so I will always try beans that I've not tried yet.


----------



## thesmileyone (Sep 27, 2016)

louiseb said:


> Never tried them, I personally have never had any good beans from a supermarket.
> 
> Place an order with bailies roasters in Belfast and try their beans, I promise you wont regret it. AMAZING coffee.


You should try Union, I was very impressed with my waitrose-stop-gap https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/union-hand-roasted-coffee-natural-spirit-wholebean/796559-464640-464641


----------



## xpresso (Jan 16, 2018)

dfk41 said:


> I think you will find certain Aldi beans have quite a following with many on here. I was given a bag of their Peruvian which was nice and dark and as an emergency bean, it was actually very very good indeed
> 
> https://coffeeforums.co.uk/showthread.php?43778-Aldi-Special&highlight=aldi


They are among the best supermarket beans available, I suspect part down to their price and popularity does mean the turnover is quite rapid suggesting they are fresher beans than most other supermarkets.

I was pleasantly surprised and would always use them as an alternative to a coffee house supply, my comments are also documented in dfk41's link.

The Columbian was my choice.

Jon.


----------



## Batian (Oct 23, 2017)

This may or not be of relevance to Aldi coffee beans, but a farmer friend prefers to deal with Aldi over he other big supermarkets.

He tells me there are less people in the chain with Aldi, so less people feeding on the cash flow.

He sells exactly the same crop grade to Waitrose as he does Aldi, so if the same system applies to coffee as it does to salad, then that may be the reason Aldi beans are not so bad?

Picture taken from my back yard, spinach being harvested last week.

View attachment 35922


----------



## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

I wonder why the scaling of £s to equipment and £s spent on beans dont seem to correlate .

Re people in the chain, I can't see how this applies to the coffee being better as a result. It's more likely that Aldi are just able to sell it cheaper and make the same profit. Knowing how much specialty coffee goes for per KG and what other stuff goes for, it just doesn't add up.


----------



## xpresso (Jan 16, 2018)

There are many items available at differing prices, from differing suppliers, sometimes a substantial difference for exactly the same item, paying more does not always suggest value for money or superior quality.

How many people spend thousands on cars, only to avoid best they can paying to use a car park.


----------



## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

xpresso said:


> There are many items available at differing prices, from differing suppliers, sometimes a substantial difference for exactly the same item, paying more does not always suggest value for money or superior quality.
> 
> How many people spend thousands on cars, only to avoid best they can paying to use a car park.


Ok but you wouldn't run your car on moonshine that your mate makes would you.


----------



## Batian (Oct 23, 2017)

Mrboots2u said:


> I wonder why the scaling of £s to equipment and £s spent on beans dont seem to correlate .
> 
> Re people in the chain, I can't see how this applies to the coffee being better as a result. It's more likely that Aldi are just able to sell it cheaper and make the same profit. Knowing how much speciality coffee goes for per KG and what other stuff goes for, it just doesn't add up.


I would suggest that if there are fewer people being paid, then there is more in the budget to buy a better quality product to sell? And then, as you say, sell it cheaper and make the same profit?

In a very small way, I am involved and interested in the general background to this. The attached is current and relevant.

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/article/2001290251/poorly-performing-coffee-societies-in-meru-to-be-closed

To put it into perspective, much of the coffee grown in Meru County would qualify at 80+.

As per the article 60 Kenyan shillings/kg (top price roughly) for high quality cherry . Often it is as low as 20Ksh.

And roughly 6kgs of cherry to 1kg of milled greens.

And then the Hyenas, Jackals and Pie dogs start circling....

So I have to submit again, cut out the middle feeders and the end user can get a better deal for the same cost, and so does the grower. And it happens in The West as well... price chopping by supermarkets has lead to so many food scams in the last couple of years.


----------



## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

Batian said:


> I would suggest that if there are fewer people being paid, then there is more in the budget to buy a better quality product to sell? And then, as you say, sell it cheaper and make the same profit?
> 
> In a very small way, I am involved and interested in the general background to this. The attached is current and relevant.
> 
> ...


Are Aldi doing direct trade then ?


----------



## xpresso (Jan 16, 2018)

Mrboots2u said:


> Ok but you wouldn't run your car on moonshine that your mate makes would you.


You've met him then and only if it wasn't a drinkable batch.







.


----------



## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

xpresso said:


> You've met him then and only if it wasn't a drinkable batch.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Is his name Jessie Duke


----------



## MildredM (Feb 13, 2017)

xpresso said:


> There are many items available at differing prices, from differing suppliers, sometimes a substantial difference for exactly the same item, paying more does not always suggest value for money or superior quality.


Which is why I go to a trusted roaster such as Foundry, Has Bean etc knowing they source beans carefully, ensure they support half decent pay for farmers (to the best of their ability, of course. The roaster doesn't implement protocols to make sure what exactly happens but I'm pretty sure they support and promote good practices). I have NO idea what crap I'm buying if I go to Aldi et al. Fair enough if you like the taste and are happy with it. I don't like it and therefore choose my roaster and beans carefully to suit me.



> How many people spend thousands on cars, only to avoid best they can paying to use a car park.


Not sure what this means but you can't really lump everyone in together. Nothing in this life is black and white. This or that.


----------



## Batian (Oct 23, 2017)

In the example I used above re salad, definitely yes.

If you mean direct trade with coffee producers, I would suspect not????

But the format is the same whatever?

If a supermarket has (as a theoretical example) a budget of £10 a unit to buy coffee to the point of retail sale, and coffee is priced by quality, at say £2, £4, £6, £8, and £10 a unit, and the supermarket has £4 costs in getting that unit to the point of sale, (buyers, testers, supervisors, middle managers and so on) then they can only buy coffee at under £6. But if they reduce cost to the point of retail sale, they can buy better quality (and more variety) within the budget.

Or am I missing something ?


----------



## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

xpresso said:


> There are many items available at differing prices, from differing suppliers, sometimes a substantial difference for exactly the same item, paying more does not always suggest value for money or superior quality.
> 
> How many people spend thousands on cars, only to avoid best they can paying to use a car park.


Unless Aldi are a wholesale importer of green coffee, they buy from roasters, who buy from wholesale importers, coffee is a traded commodity, prices fluctuate and sometimes quite a lot. You can buy spot or forward. If you buy spot you pay the spot commodity price, if you buy forward you usually pay more not less, because it guarantees you supply, especially for speciality. It's true to say that for a particular coffee you may pay £34 per kg at one roaster and £40 per kg at another and it may be just a price difference. Or there may be a subtle difference in the coffee. e.g. Gems of Araku Mandal is expensive, but a gems of Araku Microlot, may be double the price (depending on cupping score and quality). You may get 6 Rawandan coffees, some might cup at 86, some at 88, some at 90 and some at 92, depending on which far, region etc.. they came from.

When you get down to cheap coffee in the supermarkets, that's what you get. *You don't get coffee costing £3.49 for a 454g bag that was originally £6 per kg green* and because the Aldi supply chain is so brilliant they can sell it at zero profit for the roaster, carrier and retailer. For that coffee to be sold at that price, the roaster is paying in the region of £2.70 per kg for the green coffee (I hope to god not less). For every kg roasted, he gets 854g of coffee. So each gram of coffee costs 0.316p after roasting.

A 454g bag costs of green coffee, bag, gas and transportation of green...about£1.90 of pure cost. This doesn't include the price of the roaster, maintenance costs, insurance, rent or wages!! Somewhere the rest of the roasters costs, profit for them, profits for Aldi, plus transportation, all have to be factored into the remaining. £1.59. Clearly they pay the absolute minimum for coffee to sell 454g at £3.49. I am in fact surprised they can do it for that price and I wonder if it's even worthwhile for the roaster to do this sort of business. I know a roaster who does huge high volume business and it's a knife edge of very low margins, massive investment and the constant worry of loosing a large client. All for very little profit.

My own personal view is that if you have spent any money on a reasonable set-up, you must want to use beans better than this? I can take a cheap coffee and roast it to taste OK, but we are surely about great coffee, even on modest equipment. ideally we should pay more for the coffee....as a rule of thumb work on 350% on the green. e.g. If you pay £24 per kg of coffee, the green should be costing around £7 per Kg to keep your roaster in business. A 250g bag might well cost more, because of the bag cost extra packing time etc.. so this could equate to £8.50 to £9 per 250g bag. Roasters making less than that are giving themselves a very tough job and should really only do it for special offers, or bean machine supply deals. They have wages to pay, losses, other business costs like rent rates and the roaster maintenance. They don't often go wrong but when they do, it can be expensive. The initial cost of a good roaster can be a significant business cost. What a small roaster saves in cost, it makes up for in the time to roast per kg (and time is money)..

So for green coffee if £2.70 per kg is low grade commodity coffee, £4-5 per Kg mid grade (beginning speciality) and £6-9 gets you a decent speciality grade.....you can use that to judge what you should be paying for roasted coffee (depending on the quality you want). Sure you can pay a lot more and prices change all the time but those are simply very rough guidelines. It might also be a roaster has coffee that they need to move as it's roasted and getting older on the shelf and you may get a bargain....at the roasters expense of course.

P.S. After all most people don't baulk at paying costa £2.50 for a flat white that cost perhaps 30p of ingredients.


----------



## thesmileyone (Sep 27, 2016)

I always presumed supermarket beans would be far inferior than Foundry for example. Then I stumpled upon Union. Foundry is better... but not 2x better. Foundry also seems to take 7 days to send it to me no matter when I order and pay for 1st class posting. Yet I keep ordering from them because... it just feels right.

I drive an audi a3 tfsi and I only use vpower or momentum fuel. It will run on 95, but it feels wrong to put 95 in when premium is available. Granted there are some advantages to this, also the exhaust gets louder (a common thing found in different cars and vpower) which I presume means the ecu likes the fuel and alters the timing to suit.

So I buy premium beans. I'm actually thinking of trying Daterra Farms Sweet Blue next, they seem to be the vpower of the coffee world.

HOWEVER there is an Aldi 2 miles from my house. Do I want to wait 7 days when I run out vs a 7 minute drive?


----------



## xpresso (Jan 16, 2018)

Wonder what the results would be on a blind taste test, Aldi and I believe Lidl have several times been awarded accolades for Champagnes, Whiskies and Gins based on that.

They sell many items across the board and therefore are able to be very competitive, independent coffee roasters sell mainly only coffee, yes they need to be nigh on perfect and yes they need to charge accordingly.

I have come out of the closet and dared to say that Aldi's Columbian is palatable, none of the other grains in the range, which incidentally the children bought me on the start of my journey, got beyond a second brew, as for Lidl's offering it failed totally to have any impact.

Aldi is a privately owned company so I have no financial or other benefits in 'Suggesting' based on my taste that the Columbian was palatable.

Jon.


----------



## 4085 (Nov 23, 2012)

You have to remember that there is so much crap talked about coffee. Not everyone is a super taster and if you put milk in your coffee all you are really left with is a choice between drinkable or not. I doubt the Aldi type beans are aimed at the sort of expert that uses this forum, but as a go to bean the couple I have tried were absolutely fine but I would not buy them as a first choice bean.

This has been said before, but if anyone is looking for a traditional Italian style with a bit of oommpphh, buy Illy Decaf in the green tin. if you have not tried them please do not comment....if you have tried them and you like the description above, you will enjoy them.......and forget about the lack of caffeine unless you need it for medicinal reasons!


----------



## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

As dave posted, it's doubtful Aldi have aceess to some magical pile of greens and a magical price, roasted by someone who doesn't want to make a profit.

Like what you like but they are what they are, I'm not slagging preference or taste of of those that like. Again as dave says, the farmer is gettong f all, the roaster is more than likely just using the volume to turn ovet a minimal. Margin and using other parts of their business to make a profit. I know to most people this doest matter but again coffee farmers in alot of countries just don't see the value or profit foelr the work they do and are/will move to other cash crops.


----------



## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

Mrboots2u said:


> As dave posted, it's doubtful Aldi have aceess to some magical pile of greens and a magical price, roasted by someone who doesn't want to make a profit.
> 
> Like what you like but they are what they are, I'm not slagging preference or taste of of those that like. Again as dave says, the farmer is gettong f all, the roaster is more than likely just using the volume to turn over a minimal. Margin and using other parts of their business to make a profit. I know to most people this doest matter but again coffee farmers in alot of countries just don't see the value or profit foelr the work they do and are/will move to other cash crops.


I completely agree, the coffee chain from grower through to consumer is an odd one. It should concern all (most) of us on forums, who look for a different standard of coffee. Without some support of the more limited supply chain of speciality coffee, it will get dumbed right down to crap grown, roasted and sold. It's much cheaper for the farmers to grow and process crap, if that's what the market is looking to buy. I remember when buying coffee in significant amounts (or trying to), the really good stuff was usually gone within a few hours of the list coming out and you had to settle for the speciality stuff that was not so good.

There is a lot less really good speciality coffee than people think and we have to support it. Some roasters are going to argue...but the larger they get the harder it is to keep doing good speciality coffee. The reasons should be obvious really. Luckily for all of us lots of new roasters have sprung up within the last 5 or 6 years and many of them now know what they are doing and will have learnt to roast properly. They will get larger and as they do, roast more, hopefully, speciality coffee for the market. Roasters have 2 ways to go, lower volume, high quality.....................or high volume, lower quality. Regardless of what is said I have never seen things go any other way e.g. high volume, high quality, the two don't seem to go hand in hand. To put that in perspective, I would call a roaster with a 20-25kg machine doing 1000kg - 1500kg per week (roasting 2-3 days per week) a low volume roaster.

Unfortunately far too many roasters branch out seeking more and more profits, with ever larger bean and machine deals, a commercial customer asks for 500kg per week, then another and another and all to soon it seems an easy way to go, investment in more roasters, more people, more machinery for weighing bagging etc.. and suddenly, they have to produce 1500kg per week, just to stay in business....let alone make healthy profits.

These small roasters are not on benefits, pay UK taxes and employ people....So support smaller roasters if you can....if you prefer Aldi coffee, fair enough, but try and support the little guys, because they are the ones that keep the speciality side going.....not the huge concerns that supply the supermarkets.


----------



## xpresso (Jan 16, 2018)

Anybody buy car fuel from a supermarket ?.


----------



## MildredM (Feb 13, 2017)

xpresso said:


> Anybody buy car fuel from a supermarket ?.


Are you comparing fuel to coffee beans?


----------



## xpresso (Jan 16, 2018)

Some of the 'Discussion' mentions supporting the independent/sole trader, how many privately owned petrol stations still exist today.


----------



## MildredM (Feb 13, 2017)

xpresso said:


> Some of the 'Discussion' mentions supporting the independent/sole trader, how many privately owned petrol stations still exist today.


The reasons for indie petrol stations closing isn't simply because of the competition from supermarkets.


----------



## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

Yeah this has descended into farce hasn't it


----------



## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

xpresso said:


> Some of the 'Discussion' mentions supporting the independent/sole trader, how many privately owned petrol stations still exist today.


I don't know what this has to do with the price of beans (slight pun intended). We still support local butchers and fishmongers where we can. With Petrol stations it has been impossible to support sole traders for a long time.


----------

