Supermarket Coffee vs. Specialty Coffee | What Tastes Better???

Coffee Bean Review Series special edition. In this video we put Italy's two most popular supermarket coffee brands (Illy & Lavazza) against a representative of the specialty coffee industry. Let the best coffee win!

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Individual accounts:

[sefaonur]

Unfortunately I disagree with you about illy classico. When you open the tin can, the aroma of deliciously potent coffee permeates the air which I love it. The flavor of the beans fills the entire mouth without bitterness or any cloying feel. I taste the coffee and the taste lingers without turning bitter. It is not a medium roast as any other but is much richer and expressive of the beans' oils and flavor profile as described by Illy.

[yasinmadakia]

Good comparison. After trying many types of coffees in the last 10 years, from traditional to espresso, I find the best to be a fresh locally roasted coffee from a specialty roaster. Freshness makes a big difference. Normally I find anything more than 2 to 3 months from roast date to be rancid.

[LeMary]

OMG! I just bought a Breville Barista Express and I've been using the Lavazza Oro to dial in and I've been wasting so much coffee because I find it so bitter. I just assumed I didnt dial in correctly and i was over extracting, but I tried to ground more course and all I taste is the sour. Hearing you describing the Lavazza Oro now I noticed it matches exactly with the way I taste.

[fromdil]

I agree with Allan; I was a great fan of Illy, and when I was in Italy, I always used to enjoy the Illy brand, and I have no complaints.

[Jjfnine]

I have to disagree about Illy. It tastes very chocolaty and never bitter. Maybe you had a wrong grind size or the temperature was too high.

[mshaker]

I tried danesi, lavazza oro, crema and untill now could find a brand better than illy. It’s pricy but no doubt illy Classico is the best I found .. no matter I try to find a replacement to illy due to price I end up going back to illy….

[matijatatomirovic]

Wrong recipe for the Illy. This is traditional IT espresso blend/roast. Max 14 grams in, 50gr out, max 20 sec. It's a dark roast, following the "moddern" standard you end up with overextracted, burnt espresso. There's actually official Illy paper with the recipe.

[l.carlito]

i love the lavazza ORO. Very good balanced..In combination with a croissant or bread it is fabulous! In many restaurants and cafe's in holland i dont get better coffee. Always quite sour

[luckusters]

Nice comparison. I've bought Illy exactly once. I truly undersand what you mean by the smell, it's really bad and confusing because I was expecting something at least half way decent even if it was commercial brand coffee. I kept the can though, a nice bean container. I prefer it to plastic bags. So I guess it was still a usefull purchase for the can!

[stefpix]

I moved to NYC in 2000. People here liked Bustelo. I never had anything so bitter and harsh.Or some Starbucks dark roasts. The USA brought so much bitterness to the coffee cuo, but at last now people are waking up to decent coffee. WOuld be interesting to know what you'd think of Bustelo.

[leng]

This is the very interesting video. We need more this type of review.

[zovlah]

Hi Goran,
Completelly agree. If, and only if I am in the mood for the Italian style I use Pellini Top. Give it a try.

[GP-hfqi]

Thanks for the video. Illy gave me the exact same result and impression when I first tried it with my GC and I thought I was doing something wrong. Illy is actually better brewed using a mokka pot I found.

[timfields]

Do a video on how to install the pid on the Gaggia

[rioborzeli]

WOW, I have tried Illy and Lavazza. Just trying now the specific specialty coffee as of today My Jura S8 have Carraro Tazza d'oro, Look out, so good, smooth, no bitterness, hints of chocolate, just a tad of sweetness, goes great with milk and esspresso. I also have next to that is Maromas ORPHEA, And yes this is also compared and same but just a tad lighter on the chocolate tones. Both are just fabulous. I am looking to try what you have the specialty coffee blend. take care

[roquefort]

Good one Mate. Illy is a disgrace, I agree. Oro is a decent cup for sure. Supercrema, I love that one.

[jujuchou]

Thanks a lot for the thorough comparisons! These are great take-aways when choosing among so many different beans. Was in Supermarket and saw the ORO on sale today but didn't dare to take one cause it seems overly cheap. LOL. After your review, I think I'm gonna grab one and try it out :)!!

[uffa]

I always found Illy caffè to be difficult to grind. For years, I tried it from time to time and was always disappointed, and yet bars serving Illy never disappointed me. Then I modified my Gaggia MDF grinder and made it stepless. When I bought another can of Illy, after a bit of trial and error I found the right grinding and I could appreciate it, I found it different and very interesting, with berry aromas. Overall I tend not to like much 100% arabica and therefore I don't consume neither Illy nor Lavazza Oro in general. Bars which serve Illy always give you a very interesting cup but I do find the grinding to be tricky and I suspect this experiment leaves something to be desired on the correct recipe for this particular blend. I think there was some bias at work here, due also to the very high price on the Australian market. Here in Italy Illy costs around €25 per kg, which compares with around €14 for a Lavazza Qualità Rossa which is the king of the market and has an average price. Illy is typically the most expensive in the supermarket wall, but it's not that expensive as it is in Australia. I think the poster was moved by a sense of antipathy for this high price, and wanted to "punish" this producer without carefully looking for the right recipe for this blend. No coffee is better than the barista making it. Also, with all due respect for a Baby Gaggia (my machine, bought in 2001) that's not the kind of machine to be used to seriously compare coffee blends, because there might be an idiosyncrasy between that blend and machine (pressure, temperature, pump "behaviour", this is a very simple machine and one cannot fine tune anything, the temperature of extraction might just have been too high, you leave the machine on all the time and this can give you an overextracted cup if you don't let the machine rest a bit). Overall I can say that I can often obtain a very good cup at home with most blends, but the most "finicky" blend to play with, at home, in my 20-more years experience, was the Illy. That said, all the test has some element of absurdity in it, if I had to buy that Australian coffee in Italy, if I found it, I would probably pay it twice as much in Italy as in Australia, while I would pay the Illy half the price in Italy as compared to Australia, which means the same comparison would show the Australian coffee costs 4x the Illy, in Italy. It's not a fair comparison and I think it is flawed in many ways. Italian wine costs absurd prices in Australia and Australian wine doesn't exist in Italy, a comparison between two completely different distribution realities (Illy certainly cannot have the distribution efficiency in Australia that it enjoys in Italy) doesn't make any sense. And yes, by all means when in Australia, buy Australian coffee! Finally, the styles of those coffees are completely different, and it is like comparing a limousine with a coupé, and then saying well, the limousine doesn't handle corners very well.

[deonellis]

Where do you have the most intense taste...flat white or espresso?

[yasinmadakia]

Thanks for sharing . What scale are you using ?