Sneak preview: I’ve brewed one batch in my Bodum Vac Pot and it’s pretty good; at least on par with what you’d get at ‘bucks, Tully’s, or even Peet’s. I definitely feel the “matte” aspect; my buzz is different than usual. And boy I needed it today.

However, a very similar product from Jeremiah’s Pick (a dark roast with matte), which I used to get when readily available at a local store, was better. Another coffee that’s marketed similarly as as a “get up and go” coffee, Carribean Coffee’s “hair raiser”, also a superdark, caffeine-heavy product, is better in my opinion in terms of flavor profile (though I’ll admit the Meth takes milk much better than Hair Raiser, which is best black.) And you know I don’t have your palate, but the Meth has does have one sort of card-board-ish element in its flavor profile that’s restraining my enjoyment of it (a sort of flatness on the tip of one’s tongue that I’d usually associate with being a stale coffee, though this characteristic is isolated enough that I think it’s just part of the profile; i.e., the coffee’s fresh).

So, in sum, while the marketing is initially distasteful/silly/poser-ish/Gonzo-y (though once you dig deeper onto the site it gets sorta funny; they, for instance, give instructions on making coffee using a sock), it’s not bad. It’s also sort of nice to see coffee get attention in different kinds of media; I heard a dude on news radio talking about this back on the 11th. Since decent coffee is so often not in headlines (”BK introduces better coffee” is the norm), I think we’re still at the stage in the industry where any micro-roaster getting attention is a good thing, even for silly reasons.

Anyways — mixed feelings. But I’m enjoying the brew overall. I can’t be too snarky about people that are trying anything to get better-than-market coffee up off the ground, particularly since they are based here in SF