Good morning and welcome to a long-overdue review! It has been a while, life has a way of doing that, but I am back and ready to share more coffee with you this morning. Today I’m checking out a hemp/CBD-infused coffee from Buddha Beans Coffee Co. Not my usual thing here on KC Coffee Geek, but I thought it was worth tasting some samples and if it makes it to this point, you know it’s pretty good coffee, so let’s check out this selection from Mexico without further ado!
Buddha Beans Coffee Co. website
Purchase this coffee for $10/2oz (50mg CBD), $21/6oz (150mg CBD) or $38/12oz (300mg CBD)
BUDDHA BEANS COFFEE CO. HEMP INFUSED MEXICO
It has been a while since I had a review to share with you and I apologize for that. It was a very busy time at work, had some work-related travel, got Covid for the first time and was sick for a while, and my wife and I had a little vacation to Isla Holbox in Mexico, so things have been busy enough to keep me from doing any writing. I’m back, and this time with something new and different for KC Coffee Geek, a hemp-infused/CBD coffee. Generally when people approach me about coffees like this, flavored coffees, Amazon-carried coffees, etc I steer pretty clear, but a quick peek at their website after Buddha Beans reached out to me had my interest piqued and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try. The fact that it has made it to a public review means it’s worth writing about in a positive way, as I don’t publish negative coffee reviews (world is already negative enough), so let’s see what this coffee is all about.
Buddha Beans’ website says it is a micro-roaster established in Los Angeles, CA in 2018, but they make no mention of the people behind the business. The website does show a young guy smiling and holding a cannabis plant in a field, and the text says they started out on a popcorn popper, like a lot of home roasters, and eventually led to a blending of their passions: coffee and cannabis. They use what they call a proprietary infusion process to get CBD into the coffee, and state that all the roasting and infusing is done in-house. CBD is cannabidiol, one of over 100 cannabinoids found in cannabis plants. CBD is all the rage and has been for years here in the USA, where it is touted as a cure-all for everything from sleepiness to anxiety, depression, chronic pain etc. CBD is non-addictive and does not inebriate the user. I really know very little about CBD and have limited experience using it. A friend of mine started a CBD company in the past year or so and I’ve tried their products without feeling any difference and I didn’t feel a different experience drinking this Buddha Beans coffee, either, so who knows? I have not tried finding a therapeutic dose for myself, but, frankly, I don’t want to turn my morning coffee into medicine, either, so I haven’t tried that hard. I HAVE done some experiments with my friend’s CBD product, though, which showed me that it dissolves fully in coffee (well, espresso, but same thing) and appears to my palate, at least, to be tasteless and aroma-less, so I wouldn’t know these coffees were infused if it were a blind tasting.
The first coffee I’m trying from Buddha Beans is labeled Single Origin Mexico. On the website, the label specifies that it’s from the Chiapas region, however, the label on my 2oz bag is slightly different and doesn’t specify the region. It also says “50mg hemp” and not “50mg CBD” but I think it must be the same coffee. The Buddha Beans website does not specify anything about the origin of the coffee, otherwise, but do state that the hemp infusion is 100% organix, non-GMO and USA-grown and they recommend a daily dosage of 1-3 cups. CBD has about a 6% absorption through oral routes and 11-45% via inhalation, so how much of it actually gets into a person’s system seems to be based on a wide variety of individual factors. My 2oz sample is labeled as containing 50mg of “hemp” (assuming CBD), but I’m not sure if that is per serving, total for the bag, or what.
On the website, this coffee is available both as a medium or dark roast. I saw no oils or dark brown-nearing-black colors on the beans, so I assume they sent me the medium roast. I used my standard pourover setup to prepare this coffee, which is a 1:16.5 ratio of 22g of coffee to 363g of Third Wave Water in a Trinity Origin dripper with a Kalita 155 filter. I pulse pour through a Melodrip to minimize agitation of the coffee bed during brewing and my grinder is a Lido 3 from Orphan Espresso. This coffee got about a 40 second bloom and had a total brew time of 3:10.
The aromas from the cup are nice and what I would expect from a solidly medium roasted Mexican coffee. I’m getting some nice hits of caramel, some roastiness, some almost-burnt sugars and it is a pleasant, familiar aroma that I find extremely inviting. My first few sips had a decent amount of roastiness, but my palate attenuated quickly to that. That, mixed with letting this cool down to a good lukewarm drinking temperature, took most of the roastiness out for me, but it did creep back into the aftertaste, not that it’s a bad thing. This is an extract of a roasted seed, after all! LOL The flavors are consistent with the aromas, with a nice, sweet, caramel base to the cup. I’m getting some nuttiness that isn’t a specific nut for my palate, and some hints of cocoa here too. There’s a nice balance from citrus acidity in this coffee. I’m getting orange, primarily, and it reminds me more of orange flavoring or like orange candy or orange soda than orange fruit itself. I know that doesn’t sound super appealing, but it works well in this coffee and with these other flavors, for me. I don’t notice any “off flavors” or anything that tastes foreign to me, and I believe this is the first brewed coffee I’ve ever had that has CBD in it. There is some astringency on my palate in the aftertaste, and a decent amount of bitterness that lingers, too, but that could just as easily be from the coffee and the roast itself, as neither of these is unique or uncommon in my long experience of tasting coffee.
My 2oz sample bag was just enough coffee to make this pourover and two 18g doses for espresso. The first shot I pulled was 18g in, 28.5g out using some manual flow manipulation and with no timer set. This shot turned out to be on the sour side with a lot of grapefruit coming through in the acidity and some mango, too. My second shot a couple days later I let run faster and I didn’t weigh it, but it was definitely a larger-ratio shot with more coffee in the cup, so a little less concentrated, and I enjoyed this a lot. It had nice sweetness, good balance, some mango in the background and hints of pineapple, too.
ConclusionsÂ
Commenting only on the coffee itself, and flavors, I really enjoy this Mexican selection from Buddha Beans. It’s as dark as I would personally care for, but the roast pulled out good sweetness as well as a delicious balancing citrus acidity. It’s drinkable, approachable, and would be a no-brainer for someone’s daily driver coffee or espresso. I didn’t notice the presence of CBD in the cup in terms of flavor, aroma, texture, etc nor did I feel anything different from drinking a regular cup of coffee.
This does bring me to something I have to mention, which is the price of this coffee. Obviously, with CBD extracted and infused into the coffee, the price is going to be more than if there was no CBD. In this case, my little sample bag would cost $10 and a full size 12oz. bag of this Mexican coffee would set you back $38. Most specialty-grade Mexican coffees on the market in the USA are going to run $16-$20 for 12oz, so that’s a big upcharge, but that’s also a personal decision. For me, I would not pay that premium only because I can’t tell if I’m getting any effect from the CBD, or not, so I would of course go for the best-tasting coffee that is at the lowest price, as most consumers would. If CBD is part of your lifestyle or if you notice an effect, maybe you would choose to pay the premium for this infused coffee and your decision would be totally different from mine. Either way, this is a good coffee and a great drinker, so the decision really hinges on whether you are getting secondary effects from it that you want or not. My only concern with Buddha Beans’ coffees is that I didn’t notice a roast date on the three bags they sent, and their website does say to consume it within 9 months, so I suspect they don’t date their offerings. This coffee seems fresh to me. It bloomed nicely and pulled well in the espresso machine, not like an old coffee at all, and that’s after it rested on my counter for about 3 weeks after receiving it. So, this had to be freshly roasted before it was sent my way. Buddha Beans is sold on Amazon and I’m not sure how that works, if there are bags of this sitting in a warehouse somewhere or if the order goes through Amazon and then is freshly roasted and sent out from Los Angeles, but that always concerns me a bit. In the USA, it’s not uncommon to see coffees with “best by…” dates that are a year out from today’s date in the grocery store, for example. But, I have to think Buddha Beans’ intended market is not the niche coffee geeks so much as a wider consumer, and since this is the norm in the coffee industry here at this time, I can’t fault them for doing it, but my preference is to always see a “roasted on” date on a bag.