Review on ☕️ Kicking Horse Coffee Kick Ass: Dark Roast, Ground - Organic, Fairtrade & Kosher 10 Oz by Piyush Ventura

I've bought 3 different Kicking Horse roasts over the past few weeks to try. My favorite £2 coffee bag has gone up in price so I'm looking for cheaper coffee. The appeal of Kicking Horse is that you get a little more (2.2 pounds) for just $2-3 more than I spent on my previous favorite drink, which went up $13 for less coffee. My first try was Smart Ass. I won't lie. That was the name I liked and it was a medium roast. I bought it in a 10 ounce bag which is not cheap long term but was good for testing. I really wanted to like him because the name suits my personality so much, but I just couldn't. I'm not a fan of "fruity-sweet" roasts and I felt like that. Another downside was that it was bitter, which also told me the grind wasn't very fresh, but even without that I still wouldn't like the taste. Unfortunately it was thrown in the trash. Next on the list was Kick Ass, a dark roast. I used to drink dark roasts all the time and never had a problem, but once I found my former favorite, which was a medium roast, and started drinking it regularly, it became hard for me to go back to a dark roast. The overall flavor profile suits my palette much better, but the "burned" earthiness that accompanies lots of dark roasts was too obvious for me on its own. However, unlike Smart Ass, this one hasn't been thrown away as I found that if I brew it with a bit of pumpkin spice, cinnamon or cardamom, that burnt flavor dissipates and rounds off nicely. As I usually add this to my beers I would consider keeping this in mind as a backup roast. I'm hoping that my third bag, Three Sisters, a medium roast that tastes similar to Kick Ass (and my other favorite medium roasts), will be the end of my tasting journey and I can buy a new strain pack in the larger and economy packs and whole grain. The only reason I haven't tried this is because I don't want to waste Kick Ass. I'll probably update my review once I've tried it. For now, I just like their decaf, which isn't bitter like most other decafs. So, while looking for a new regular drink, I tried their other caffeinated options. I figured if Kick Ass was medium roasted instead of dark it would be my new favorite. I don't know if this Three Sisters pack was stale, but it seemed to have a sweet flavor (like Smart Ass) that I don't like, followed by a bitter taste that's usually associated with stale beans. I threw away the first cup and tried a second cup with cinnamon (just like I did with Kick Ass which smoothed it out) and I could still taste that sweet bitter taste like I did with Smart Ass. Needless to say, the hunt continues.