5 Aldi Coffees To Buy And 3 To Avoid

Aldi has more than earned its reputation as the cheapest grocery store in America on average. Its distinctive setup includes such cost-saving features as quarter deposit-shopping carts, no music playing throughout the stores, and a selection of products composed primarily of Aldi-exclusive brands. In the coffee aisle, Barissimo is one of the private-label names you will find on a fairly wide array of blends and single-origin roasts, each priced more or less competitively at around $7 to $8 for a 12-ounce bag.

In my long history as a coffee consumer, I've drunk it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. With food and coffee prices being so high right now, I'd love it if something good could be found at Aldi. By "good" I mean balanced in flavor with none of the harsh, bitter notes and regrettable aftertastes that budget coffees tend to produce. To test which of Aldi's Barissimo ground coffees are worth buying and which should be avoided, I selected eight of them — some blends, some of single origin — and brewed a cup of each in my Ninja Coffee Maker. I tasted them black, as I always do. With no creamer or sweetener to hide behind, five contenders merited buying, while three got slapped with the "Avoid" label — not a bad track record, Aldi.

I always enjoy a good Sumatra roast, a profile characterized by dark, earthy notes with a bit of spice or herbalness that yields fun complexity. The packaging of Aldi's Sumatra roast promises the standard Sumatra experience along with a hint of molasses, so I was eager to open it up and make a cup.

Once brewed, this coffee's aroma alone suggested it would be a pleasantly complex sip, and the taste delivered on that too. It was deep and earthy at first on the palate before the molasses came in. It then had this delightful herbal note right at the end that seemed to swoop upward on my palate and linger in the aftertaste. I've had more intense Sumatra coffees before, not to mention more complex, but this was surprisingly multifaceted for a bag that's only about $8. In my notes, I wrote, "Heck yeah, I would buy this." Out of all the Aldi coffees I tasted for this experiment, this one had the most personality.

Coffees marketed as "donut shop" or "donut store" blends tend to be roasted on the lighter side, but they can also edge up into a medium roast, like this Barissimo donut store blend from Aldi. Balance and general likeability are the hallmarks of donut store coffees — the name alone implies they'd be well-received by a diverse audience alternating bites of sweet pastries with energizing sips of morning joe. Think nothing too "out there" on the palate, but nothing bland, either.

Aldi's donut store medium roast didn't quite achieve that for me. It was a very nice, bright coffee. I definitely tasted the nutty notes highlighted on the packaging. It also had a pleasant, clean finish. It did lean a tad too acidic for me on the palate, but there was no bitterness at all. That said, the sweet, caramel notes didn't creep in until right at the very end of the aftertaste, and I didn't love that. With this level of brightness, I'd prefer it a little bit sweeter from the start. In all, it's a good coffee, but it's not doing what I'd want my donut store roast to do. For me, this one's an "Avoid," though I'd happily accept a cup if offered.

Aldi describes its Adventure Blend — roasted right at a comfortable medium — as well-rounded, rich, and smooth: a crowd-pleasing cup, in other words. This struck me as a little funny, given that the name of the blend implies more of an intrepid tasting experience.

Names aside, I found this Aldi coffee to be everything it was promised to be: very smooth and balanced, with a pleasant sweetness reminiscent of red fruit and chocolate. This sweetness hit from the start and lingered in the aftertaste, making me eager for each next sip. While this is far from an adventurous beverage, it was interesting in that it had a depth and complexity I'd expect in more of a dark roast than a medium. In all, I would buy this blend if I needed a generally likable coffee for a wide audience; it's a trustworthy cup in the way that a donut shop blend is supposed to be, but this one succeeded at that task while Aldi's actual donut store blend did not quite get there.

Breakfast blend coffees, perhaps more so even than donut shop blends, have a reputation that consumers depend on when choosing a bag for their own needs. They tend to be medium to light-medium roasts replete with brightness, citrusy notes, and some sweetness to balance out the acidity — coffee you're meant to look forward to each morning as a dependable wake-up call. From its packaging, Aldi's Breakfast Blend sits comfortably in this niche: It's a lighter medium roast and promises notes of sweet cocoa, dried fruits, and spices.

Once I brewed a cup, the aroma definitely gave off the dried fruits that the packaging promises. It hinted at the crispness that awaited me. On the palate was a bright acidity with a hint of syrupy sweetness. The aftertaste, however, was where things went wrong. It didn't linger long, but it turned a tad too sour for me at the end to be a cup of coffee that I would crave when I get up before sunrise. If less sweetness and more tartness are what you like in a breakfast blend, this might do it for you. For me, it goes in the Avoid column, as there are other breakfast blends out there that are more balanced in the way I like.

The exact flavor profile of a Guatemalan coffee depends on its region of origin among the highlands and subtropical rainforests that comprise the nation's bean-producing areas. Generally speaking, though, a crisp acidity is one common feature of Guatemalan coffees, along with sweetness and/or floral notes. Aldi's Guatemala coffee doesn't specify a particular region or other information one might expect to find when reading a coffee bean label, but the brand does promise a cup filled with notes of chocolate, nuts, and dried fruit, with a nutty aroma and a smooth finish.

The coffee's aroma was indeed rich with a nuttiness that was very inviting. Flavor-wise, this was a balanced, drinkable, mellow coffee with zero bitterness and a clean aftertaste. The biggest surprise was the relatively mild acidity and the emphasis on the sweetness, which complements those nutty notes. I've had a few Guatemalan roasts like that before — typically at a higher price point than this Aldi bag — and always enjoy them. For $7.85, the price of all single-origin Barissimo coffees at Aldi, I would definitely buy this again.

Aldi sells two Barissimo coffees labeled "German Roasted" – one medium and one dark — both low acidity. German Roasted was not a term I had heard before shopping for this coffee review, and googling the term mostly yielded hits related to Aldi. I can only assume the special thing about German roasted coffee is that it is literally roasted in Germany. The coffee itself, according to the package, is a blend of East African and Latin American beans. Whether that's Tanzania, Ethiopia, Colombia, El Salvador, etc., is not specified, which was a little disappointing given that your coffee's source country tells you a lot about its flavor.

The next distinctive feature of this Aldi coffee is that it comes vacuum-sealed, so it looks and feels like a brick compared to the other coffees. It was hard to open and impossible to close back up, so after brewing a cup, I placed the bag in a large zip-top and tried to squeeze the air out. If I were to purchase this regularly, I would store it in an airtight jar.

That said, I would never buy it. While the aroma was bright and exciting and the flavor smooth and nutty, I found it all a bit too muted, with a slight sourness to the aftertaste. My verdict was that this Aldi coffee is not particularly special; I would never actively look forward to drinking it, and it isn't worth the higher price tag of over $9.

I'm always interested in seeing what flavor profiles coffee roasters choose for their house blends. House blends are intended (unofficially) as a calling card for the brand — a representative offering capable of pleasing the most palates at once. They're often medium but can also go darker. This Aldi House Blend, for instance, sits comfortably between the two roast levels and offers (per the package) notes of chocolate, molasses, and hints of tobacco.

The aroma of a brewed cup held an interesting blend of brightness and depth: a good, basic medium-dark. That interesting molasses sweetness hit my palate first before morphing into that darker tobacco flavor. The flavor reminded me of the Starbucks House Blend (technically, the no-caff version, which I tried when ranking popular ground decaf coffees). But this was significantly better, lacking what I can only describe as "too much-ness" in the tobacco department. Distinctive enough to be a signature house blend but balanced enough to be a common palate-pleaser, Aldi House Blend is a firm "Buy."

When it comes to dark roast coffees, I noticed that Aldi's Barissimo brand also offers a French roast. While I love a good cup of this smoky brew, I was more curious about this dark-purple bag labeled Midnight Blend. (Yes, the packaging got me.) I also wanted to see how Aldi handles a roast not quite as dark as a French, nor as distinctive as a single-origin profile. Without a coffee sitting here on the flavor spectrum, Aldi would be missing out on a key niche, one that Midnight Blend filled beautifully.

Its deep, earthy aroma was comforting and stimulating at once. So was the flavor; it started lush and bold on my palate with dark cocoa and tobacco, then backed off, leaving a hint of sweetness. This is a coffee capable of satisfying all the features a dark roast aficionado would hope for in a bag that currently costs $7.15 (like all the other Barissimo blends). It's great consumed black, but I can imagine cream or sugar would complement its notes.

In choosing the Aldi coffees for this review, I selected only Barissimo products that were pre-ground. Aldi does sell organic whole bean coffees, but I wanted each contender to be of a similar ilk for best comparison. 

I brewed a cup of each in my Ninja Coffee Maker, one of the best drip makers on the market, using my standard preferred formula of three rounded tablespoons per 12-ounce cup. As I always do with coffee, I consumed each black, with no creamer or sweetener. A good cup of coffee should have a balanced acidity (no sourness), a clear flavor profile with readily identifiable notes, a smooth mouthfeel (not thin and watery), and a clean finish that lingers without bitterness.