2025 Coffee Wrapped

---

If 2024 was the year of finding my coffee preference, 2025 was a year of leaning into that niche. Knowing what you like is one of the secrets to consistently great coffee, and I can say without a doubt, that I had more excellent coffee this year compared to any other.

If you’re curious, you can read 2024’s wrapped here.

top coffees

According to my Beanconqueror data, I tried around 100 different bags of coffee in 2025. About a 56% increase compared to the 64 bags in 2024.

These are the coffees that, for one reason or another, were exciting to brew every morning and lodged themselves in my memory as S-tier beans. (In no particular order)

• El Burro Lot 17, Hydrangea
• Karani AA, H&S
• Gachatha AA, Shoebox
• 019 – Ángel Arturo Paz, Aviary
• Arashi, H&S

honorable mentions

It’s tough to narrow these down because so many bags could have made the honorable mentions, but I want to call out the Rwandan coffees specifically, they were delightful and exceeded my expectations.

• 012 – Emmanuel Rusatira, Aviary
• Muzo Ikizere, Shoebox
• Gildardo Lopez, Pink Bourbon (Extra Light), Thankfully
• 013 – Dimetrio Sanchez Pino, Aviary
• La Papaya, Mejorado, H&S

This year I started buying pretty much exclusively ultralight coffees, which makes it really hard to go back to toastier stuff. Alongside that, I now rest everything for 3-4 weeks minimum.

gear

This was a big year for gear, after 713 brews with the Ode Gen 2, it was time for something different. I bought a Zerno in February and it has been a dream to use. Your coffee selection matters a lot more than your gear, but allow me a moment to gush about this grinder.

I picked it up in person from Zerno’s Chicago factory and got to meet the team. I’m so happy to have a company like this in the industry, they really seem to care about their customers and are passionate about crafting a high-quality product.

For burrs, I went with the SSP MPv2 (usually just called MP) and the Brews (also called UMV1 or Unimodal). For about 2/3 of my 585 brews, I used the latter.

The Brew Burrs are great for pour over and turbo shots/soup and are pretty forgiving. It’s also been interesting to use different 64mm burr sets and compare how they present coffees, I think it’s given me a better understanding of brewing in general.

The Zerno’s cup quality has been excellent, cleaning or swapping burrs is easy, and the workflow is a delight. I’m so in love with this grinder; if money was no object I would buy the Z2 in a heartbeat. But we’re well past the point of diminishing returns.

Which brings me to my next gear update…

ZP6

My last hand grinder was my first burr grinder, the Hario Skerton. I bought that sometime around 2018, and boy have hand grinders come a long way. The ZP6 is as great as everyone says it is, beyond a few quirks, like the catch cup coming loose, or the fact that it produces some mess, the value for money is excellent.

I bought it primarily as a travel grinder, but because the cup quality is so high, I don’t mind using it for at home brews too. It’s fun to compare or change up the cup presentation, and the tactility of hand grinding is satisfying.

brewers

The Pulsar was my main brewer in 2025 with around 492 cups. I still really like the brewer for it’s consistency and high cup quality, but I think I’m ready to return to some other drippers I have on my shelf, just to change things up. If nothing else, I’ll at least enjoy the faster cleanup workflow.

Lately I’ve had good results with the Orea v4 + MHW-3BOMBER Rain Splitter. The Pulsar made me appreciate the consistency of a dispersion screen, but with the Orea I can also brew smaller doses.

Of course, there are always bumps in the road when switching brewers because you lose the muscle memory learned over hundreds of brews, but I plan on continuing to experiment with the Orea, and a bit of V60 as well, in order to brew different presentations of my coffee.

Finally, we need to talk briefly about soup. I was always a fast-turbo-shot enjoyer but I’ve really taken to soup since getting the Oxo Rapid Brewer. It feels both novel and well made, but the real perk is how quickly you can brew tasty coffee. I only have 43 brews on it thus far, so I feel like I’m still getting a feel for it.

digging into the data

origins

For three years in a row, Colombia has been my top country of origin, but beyond that, there’s a fairly wide spread, including new-to-me origins like China, India, and Yemen. The Minmax coffee from Gao Yan Village Group was excellent.

For me, the standout country this year has to be Kenya. It’s by far my favorite coffee producing country and this year is the best I’ve tasted since getting into the hobby. Every morning I was so excited to brew Shoebox or H&S’s Kenyans. Too many bangers to count; bags that hit notes of blackberry, cola, white whine, and grape. These are coffees I will remember.

varieties

The Aviary subscription skewed this graph towards Gesha which I honestly wasn’t the biggest fan of. Gesha’s can of course be incredible, but I got kind of sick of the flavor profile. The repetition made it less special, and I would have preferred other unique coffees mixed in. But beyond that sub, I’d say this graph aligns well with my preference. The potential cup quality of these is about as high as it gets and these are the coffees I’m most excited to see roasters drop.

processing

I won’t even bother with a graph here because, as per usual, almost entirely washed. Although, since I am on two subscriptions, I did try a handful of honey and natural process coffees this year. It’s nice to try something outside your comfort zone once and a while, but washed remains what I reach for day after day.

flavor notes

Orange, peach, jasmine, apple, apricot, floral, tea, stone fruit, and citrus. Sounds about right.

I’m still an acidity fiend but this year I remembered how much I love complexity in coffee. For me, that’s what takes a bag from great to excellent.

roasters

There are now six roasters that I regularly order from, and I’m quite happy with this list. They all roast great coffee and they’re companies I feel good about supporting.

The biggest change compared to 2024 is the absence of Tim Wendelboe. It will always have a special place in my coffee-enthusiast heart, but for my taste, it’s too developed to make buying an entire bag (plus shipping) worth it.

Shoebox was the star of 2025 without a doubt, and probably my favorite roaster at the moment. I did not have a single bad coffee from them, I really like their roasting style and I can’t wait to order more in 2026. If they launch a subscription I will probably jump on board.

Speaking of subscriptions, this was the first year of Aviary’s, and to be honest, I felt that it had several stumbles. With just 12 coffees throughout the year, too many of them fell short of my expectations or didn’t leave a strong impression. To be fair, there were several excellent coffees, 019 was one of my favorites after all, but I’m holding out hope that he can improve consistency in 2026, and return the to Aviary I remember from last year.

The H&S subscription (two bag, 125g) continues to be the best value out there. $15 a bag, free shipping, excellent coffee, and the ability to skip a month. It’s honestly unreal value. There were some misses throughout the year but enough bangers to more than make up for it.

In 2026 I plan to use my Aviary and H&S subscriptions alongside Shoebox orders for my main rotation. I’ll shop at Hydrangea or Thankfully when something catches my eye. Both roaster’s extra/ultralight profiles are wonderful.

spending

This is perhaps the most important component of these posts. I have a good sense of what roasters I ordered from, or the origins I prefer, but it’s dangerously easy to loose track of how much you’ve spent in a year.

The grand total for 2025 is about $1,900. A 69.2% increase from last year, $1,123.

So yeah, I’d like to spend less on coffee in 2026. My two subscriptions will cost $805 but I plan to pause H&S if there’s ever a month where I’m not excited about the release. Beyond that, I will need to show some restraint in my Shoebox buying, I should really keep it to around 4 bags per month to not exceed the amount I drink a day (30-33 grams).

My average cost per gram is higher than last year as well, 15 cents compared to 13. But the average price per cup is still a steal of a deal at $2.25.

My most expensive coffees at 33 cents per gram were Minmax’s Auromar Firestone Lot 5 and Hydrangea’s El Burro Lot 17. The latter was my favorite coffee of the year but the Minmax was kind of disappointing, I honestly don’t know when I’ll order from Minmax again because I feel like I don’t know what I’m going to get. Their consistency and roast style seems to shift too often to make buying an easy decision.

Ironically, my cheapest per gram was Minmax’s Wessi Tima, which was better than the Firestone.

looking back at 2025

This was great year for coffee and the Zerno has been a joy to use every morning. I’m really excited to have found roasters whose style clicks with my taste preferences.

One of the biggest things I learned this year is that you can’t force a coffee to be something that it’s not. Maybe this is a classic Dunning Kruger effect meme; when you’re new to home brewing, each coffee is exciting and unique. After you learn more, it’s tempting to try to endlessly dial every coffee to fit a certain ideal in your head. But unless you’re making detrimental errors in your brew, a coffee is mostly just going to taste how it tastes. I can’t dial a delicate a white floral Gesha to taste like a loud blackberry Kenya. Accepting that each coffee is unique has led to more enjoyment and a lot fewer brewing headaches.

In 2026, I’d like to buy less coffee and focus on enjoying what I have on my shelf.

And if you’ve made it this far, hi! You must like my blog posts, so thank you very much for reading. Or if you’re hate-reading, even better, it’s a huge compliment to have a hater. I’d like to post more often in 2026, my record of two posts in 2025 shouldn’t be hard to beat. I have a lot of ideas, I just need to get back in the habit. What have you brewed this year? You can compete with the bots and let me know in the comments below.

---