That would be one way to go, but we also didn’t want the coffeemaker to hold anything back. Generally speaking, a better brew will reveal more nuance and subtlety, while a less-consistent brew makes everything taste more or less the same. Hopefully next time we’ll get a chance to try both ways, but these tests take a lot of work!

Faced with regional availability and other inconsistencies, we decided to order the most popular coffees rather than looking for cases where some people might be able to get better at a specific retailer. (For example, I can get Trader Joe’s in California, people in Canada can get President’s Choice, but we can all get Tim Horton’s in the mail.)
It’s not perfect, but we hope this list gives you some useful data about brands you’ve seen and brands you probably haven’t.

Thanks for the message Mark! The New England Coffee beans in our test also has flavor added to the beans too. We agree perhaps this puts them on a different playing field but we wanted to see how the most popular and well-rated coffees did in our own testing.

And yep, we have a review on electric burr grinders meant for drip/pourover/french press style brewing (mainly not espresso), coming up in a few weeks.

I got the Mississippi Grog – I liked it a lot – but was a little surpised that it had “flavor added” – which yea made it taste great but maybe was not a totally fair comparison to the unflavored coffees in the group, just my two cents. I’m gonna try some of the other brands your reco next

Also, could you do a review for burr grinders? I’d be all ears.