Customer Reviews

illy Caffe Whole Bean Coffee (Medium Roast), 8.8-Ounce Tins (Pack of 2)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Many vocal critics of illy coffee have never actually tasted it. As Dr. House says, everybody lies and illy is apparently a very popular thing to lie about. I've caught several vocal critics lying about illy (by serving it to them, getting the typical "This is fabulous!" reaction, then telling them what they're drinking. You know, the Folger's Coffee Crystals technique).

Why is this?

Well, on the surface illy does appear to be frivolous and therefore an easy target.

- It's very expensive, especially for coffee that comes in a can
- It's got a very fussy, very European marketing envelope around it
- It tends to be sold in fussy, trendy stores
- Because it's roasted and packaged in Italy, it is always several months old when you buy it
- Did I mention that it's very expensive?

As a result, it's easy to dismiss illy as an elitist, "image" product that can't possibly be worth what it costs. And it's easy to convince others of the same thing, whether you've actually tried illy or not.

The truth is illy is really superb coffee, just about the best I've ever tried. Since I've started drinking it at home, I've found I'm actually drinking much less coffee overall, because I only know a couple of places that serve illy locally and I just don't feel like bothering with anything else, at least most of the time. The ironic net effect of this is that illy may actually be saving me some money!

I don't know if illy will be worth what it costs to you. There are some very good coffee beans sold by Costco for roughly 1/5 the price, much better than anything you can get at Starbucks or Peets. (In fact, if Starbucks or Peets is your idea of really good coffee, stop reading this now. Not because I think you're some tasteless boob, but because those brands are in the very modern, very successful mode of bitter, over-roasted, burned-tasting American coffee and I don't personally care for that. So if you like those brands, you're probably not going to like illy or any coffee that I like. Personally, I like the bottomless cup of Peerless my favorite diner serves much better than Starbucks.)

What I do know is that if you like coffee enough to own a decent grinder and other caffeine paraphernalia, you really ought to try illy. In particular, if you like light-medium roasts but find most are just too wimpy, you may just love this stuff.

If not, you'll at least have a cute, fussy little can you can sub-divide some of your Costco walnuts into. And that is something.

Illy espresso beans are my favorite of all the widely available commercially produced roasted espresso beans. This is the standard medium roast that Illy produces and it is a bit less aggressive and milder tasting than the dark roasts of Lavazza (the other major Italian brand that some people favor).

When properly ground, tamped, and brewed Illy espresso has a delightful aroma and flavor, unmatched by any of the other brands.

Granted, Illy is quite pricey, and I do not use it all the time for this reason. However, you get what you pay for. Usually, I buy my espresso from a small roasting house in the Midwest that produces a decent medium roast substitute that I do not mind using most of the time. But Illy definitely produces a higher quality bean.

One way to judge the quality of roasted espresso beans even before you taste the coffee that they will produce is to look at the evenness of color and size of the beans. The reason is that beans of a uniform size tend to roast more evenly than beans of varying sizes. Moreover, even when the beans are of a uniform size, it is important that they be roasted in small batches and churned during the the entire roasting process to ensure that they all get roasted to the same point. This is why most high quality coffee is roasted in small batches in a rotating drum that roasts all the beans to the exact same point. Moreover, since the moisture content of the beans varies a bit from batch to batch, quality control in the roasting process is extremely important. And it is here that Illy is unmatched. Just do a simple visual comparison of the color and consisteny of Illy beans when compared to any of the other widely available brands and you can easily see why Illy is the best.

Fancy coffee packaging. The quality of beans is very good. The reason for 3 stars is the price. I find Lavazza Tierra which %100 Arabica like Illy has the same quality or better for a fraction of the price of Illy beans.

I've been drinking espresso since 1983 when I was introduced to it by Signor Forza in Rome. I found out that Italians have a saying "Only women and babies drink cappucino after 9:00". What that means is that all the men take a coffee (espresso) break at 9:00. Well since I returned to the states in 1985 I have tried all kinds of expresso beans, using mostly Starbucks. I happened across a can of Illy beans at a Tucson store. I vaguely remembered the Illy brand from my 8 months in Italy and decided to try it. It is inarguably the best espresso I have had since returning from Italy.

My adventure with coffee started years ago; I've been through a Jura-Capresso S9 (Super-automatic) and eventually found my way to a Rancillio Silvia V3 espresso machine.

My hunt for good beans (Tucson, AZ) has been as variable, eventually being able to find decent fresh-ish beans at the local Whole Foods-type-place (Sunflower). Of all the mail-order, vacuum-sealed, "older" beans I've tried (including any main-stream beans like Milestone) from a super market, these Illy are much better, but compared to real, fresh beans, they don't quite stand up.

Taste-wise these beans are much smoother than I expected; because they are vacuum-sealed and typically 2-4months old by the time you get them, I expected the dry/sharp/bitter taste that I get from every other bean I've tried (you ever tried Starbucks beans? Good lord, bitter) and was surprised when they actually ended up being quite a bit smoother.

The smell during grinding is a typical "dry/old" bean smell, it doesn't have that lustrous smell that a fresh bean does and when pulling the shot it doesn't have that carmel-colored, never-ending crema that a fresh bean gives, but surprisingly enough, it tastes pretty nice.

At my Whole Foods-esque store, I can get fresh-ish beans for $7.99/lb, at roughly $36/lb it is *impossible* for me to justify these Illy beans.

If you are in a location where fresh-beans are an impossibility and you have been relegated to super-market, main-stream garbage beans, and you don't mind paying the premium, these beans are quite nice and should keep you pretty happy.

If you are a bean-snob and demand perfect behavior of your beans through the grind/shot sequence, then you probably need to keep looking and need to move somewhere where fresh coffee is more readily found :)

This is my favorite coffee! I don't drink it every day because it is a bit pricey, but whenever I have guests, I serve them illy...it is nice to let them feel special that I am sharing this treat with them. It is very smooth without leaving an acidy taste in your mouth...like drinking a desert. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a nice smooth cup of coffee. They don't burn their beans!

Illy brand has always been one of my favorite beans. The price is comparable to grocery stores. It didn't matter much to me but the tin was smashed/dented a bit on every can. The beans were unharmed.

Having drunk a bit of coffee and done some experimentation at home with our own grinder and espresso machine, we always come back to Illy.
Can't go past it, perfect every time.

I make espresso with a Delonghi Magnifica Super Auto Espresso machine and I have found Illy Medium Roast to produce the best results possible. It's a little more expensive than buying beans locally but the difference is astounding.

The beans are consistently roasted just right to produce the same high-quality cup of coffee from can to can. My only complaint is the price, but I guess you get what you pay for.