Coffee Review: Tchibo Gold Selection Ground Coffee

I recently received this from my dad who thought that I would like to try it out. It is Tchibo Gold Selection ground coffee which can be found The German Deli which is located off of Auburn Blvd. in Sacramento. At $6.99 for an  8.8oz (250g) vacuum packed container of ground coffee, I was a little surprised by the price compared to the size but had to remind myself that it was an import. As I worked on opening the packaging, being sure that I was careful not to send ground coffee flying through the air, I have come to the conclusion that I am REALLY hating how companies use the vacuum packaging process. I am fine with them using it to keep the coffee fresh but when there is no way of to reseal it so I have to stick it into a ziploc bag, I think that it will be a bit of a turn off for coffee drinkers who want to splurge on a high quality coffee but have no way or resealing it.

Pushing aside my dislike for the packaging, I was a bit curious when I discovered that the coffee appeared to be a fine ground. A little bit odd since the packaging only lists it as a ground coffee but doesn't have what kind of roast it is. Giving a shrug, I went about getting myself a cup. My confusion over this dark richly aromatic brew in my cup increases when I take a drink. The ground is more for an espresso yet the flavor has the qualities of a dark roast where it's not as bitter as an espresso but has the fruity quality of a dark Columbian. It does however seem to cause the same buzz as an espresso so this is really good for those who need a kick start in the morning or needing to do some late night work.

Doing a bit of information hunting, the left side of the package let's the buyer know that the product is from Hamburg, Germany. Rather interesting. At first I missed the company's web address due to the extremely tiny print so I was looking up Tchibo Coffee and discover that it brought me to a website with that title all in (simplified Han) Chinese. Not exactly what I was looking for so I had to take a careful second look to find that the Tchibo corporate website is actually Tchibo.com. After getting the website translated from German to English, I really couldn't see if they sold any of their products from their website. Poking around a bit, I did discover that there is a website called GermanDeli.com that has this particular coffee for $5.99. Yes it is a dollar less but there is a huge problem with this website which is that if you only want that, it will not allow you to go to the check out with it. What do I mean? You click 'Add to cart' and go to the next step which shows you what is in your cart. Click on 'Checkout' and you will get a message at the top of the page stating 'Our minimum order is $25.00' which means that you will need to go back and continue shopping to get your shopping cart total $25 or higher. Alright so hypothetically you want 5 orders of Tchibo Gold Select (totaling $29.95), you go to the checkout section which shows you that there is no taxes and gives you the options of ground shipping or 1 to 3 day air shipping but it does not allow you the chance to see what total including the shipping. What does this mean for those not too familiar with online ordering? It means that once you fill your information in the various windows, make your choice on the shipping and make your payment, you will not know the final total cost until after you've hit the approval button. Trying to figure out where the company would be shipping out from, I went to the main page and scrolled down to discover the following:

Dear Customer, Our site requires a minimum $25 purchase (can be a mix of products). During "checkout" our site provides an estimate of your shipping charges. This shipping estimate is available before payment is required. If the actual shipping costs are lower than the estimate we will charge your card the lower amount. We ship from our Texas warehouse to all 50 states in the USA, to our Troops, to Puerto Rico, and to Canada.
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So for those who may be interested in this coffee, if you're a fan of a dark roast this might be a treat for you that you may want to splurge on. As far as where to pick it up, I would suggest The German Deli located at 5859 Auburn Blvd.