Monaco Dark Roast Coffe

There was limited recent reviews, so I decided to go ahead and share my thoughts. I ordered directly from La Colombe, but I decided to purchase a lb of the Bleu (now called Deep Bleu) through Amazon because the ship time was faster (still waiting for my order from the company after a week).... Bag arrived last night and I got exactly what I ordered, Bleu, Whole Bean. I was pleasantly surprised that the Best By Date is 3/31/2026! I read some reviews that they received a bag near/past the best by date, so I'm not sure if it's hit or miss and I got lucky. As for the coffee beans themselves, I tried it this morning and it was great! No bitterness or acidity. I made two espressos and I found the beans to be smooth and creamy, excellent crema. I used my KA fully auto espresso machine. I haven't tried any other drinks yet, but I imagine if the espresso came out great, so will an Americano or if you purchase ground coffee, drip will taste just as good.

Very good coffee full of flavor - maybe the best I've had

La Colombe roasts great coffee, and this one is for us who prefer a more traditional darker roast than the 'third wave' roast styles mroe prevalent these days. Not sure why the Nizza is so affordable, esp. as a subscribe and save, but I hope it continues. I used to buy at Whole Foods, but they removed it from the shelves. I also used to buy a certain store brand which was a really good deal, but now costs as much or more than the Nizza and tastes burned. This is now my go-to. I also order their decaf from them online.

These are the best coffee beans we've found in the past few years. Our previous favorite coffee roasters appear to have not survived the pandemic, and every brand we've tried since has tasted so thin, flat and bitter -- with some that didn't even taste recognizably like coffee -- that we were considering becoming full-time tea drinkers. But this coffee has restored our faith that it's still possible to find delicious coffee at a non-prohibitive price. Brewing the coffee using the pour-over method resulted in a lovely, full-bodied, non-acidic brew that actually tastes as the flavor notes described -- chocolaty, nutty, mellow yet robust, and not the least bit bitter. The only disappointment was that the item was delivered with a Whole Foods order on August 29, but the best-by date on the package was August 17. But that's not a major complaint, as the beans are the best we've had since the end of the pandemic. We'll continue to buy this La Colombe Nizza, but next time will visit our local Whole Foods to choose a package with a best-by date that hasn't already passed.

Great taste! Kept its freshness. The packaging is reusable. What a great idea! Bold and strong, it reminded me of my grandmother's home-roasted coffee. Not bad of a price either.

The beans were over roasted, dry and had no aroma. The pour was very acidic and tasted burnt. I requested a refund immediately as the product does not match the description.

A few years ago I handled an arbitration in Manhattan and ended up living at the Tribeca Grand hotel. That turned out to be a short stroll away from a very comfortable La Colombe café, where I satisfied my espresso habit for a few months. Nizza is the blend the La Colombe cafés use for the standard espresso pull. While I have tried dozens of single origin and blended beans for espresso at home, Nizza has been my ‘house blend’ since then. Until recently, I ordered direct from La Colombe, but discovered that amazon will do prime delivery and sells the 24 ounce format for less than buying direct. I’ve ordered dozens of times now; never have I received ‘old’ coffee, ground coffee instead of beans, or less coffee than I paid for. I drink straight shots, pulled from an ECM Synchronika, ground in an ECM V-Titan grinder. My wife drinks her espresso with milk. Each of us goes through two or three 20 gram dose/40 gram pulls a day. Nizza is NOT ‘very dark roast’ as some have said here. It is a Full City to Full City+ roast, well before the beans begin to get oily and turn toward black. The Nizza flavor profile is exactly what I look for in my straight shots: dominant tones of creamy milk chocolate and toasted hazelnut, moderate acidity. My wife tells me Nizza goes well with steamed milk — I don’t touch the moo juice, although I have had shots of Nizza marked with a tablespoon or so of foam and that’s a perfect macchiato in my book. I shoot for a 1 gram dose: 2 gram shot ratio, 200F at the brewhead, about 32 to 36 seconds extraction with a few seconds of preinfusion. I use a puck screen to minimize my maintenance needs, along with a stainless steel portafilter, VMS shower screen and VST 22 gram ridgeless portafilter basket. For some reason, I always find it is uncommonly easy to dial in grind, tamp and time with Nizza beans; and I always get a pretty reasonable head of crema. I don’t think there is robusta in the blend, as often is the case with blends from Lavazza and other Italian commercial blends, so you won’t obtain the kind of crema —or the blast of caffeine — you may expect from those. I’m pretty serious about my coffee and have been for about half a century. I see some very negative reviews of Nizza here on amazon and have to wonder whether the reviewers had one of those now and then bad experiences that occur with any product, or with fulfillment of an order — or whether they just don’t have a clue what they’re doing. In any event, I’ve never been disappointed with this blend; or with amazon fulfillment of my order. And at around $20 for 1.5 pound of beans of this quality, buying the 24 ounce format Nizza whole bean coffee from amazon is a very good deal.

The beans were inconsistent in size, with many fractured, which makes them unsuitable for espresso shots. For milk-based drinks like lattes, this is less noticeable, and they perform reasonably well. I found they are better suited for pour-over brewing with a coarser grind. As for the flavor profile, I did not pick up on the advertised notes of milk chocolate, nuts, brownies, or honey-sweet nuttiness. Instead, the dominant flavors leaned earthy, with a strong presence of tobacco. These flavors may come through more clearly in a pour-over, but they did not translate well in espresso. I experimented with brew temperatures ranging from 194°F to 200°F, and found that around 195°F produced the best balance of flavor.