Blue Bottle acquires Tonx
tonx.org
tonx.org
edit: I took a look at the Blue Bottle service just now. While the price point is half of what I pay for Tonx for the same subscription, it seems like you get the same bag every time? Part of the fun of Tonx is the fact that they send you stuff that they think is great from all over the world, and not just the same thing every two weeks.
But for some reason this announcement still feels like a loss to me. It's probably my aversion to all those SF people who rave about Blue Bottle, but get drinks that drown out the coffee flavor with milk and sugar.
But it'll probably work out for the best.
The good: Tonx is awesome. Blue Bottle is great. I can't imagine coffee quality will decline due to a merger.
The bad: Tonx has lost a lot of agility. Will great and potentially risky campaigns like the recent Starbucks campaign [0] still be possible with a retail infrastructure to support and worry about?
The ugly: Tonx brings to the table two amazing single origin roasts every single month. Blue Bottle seems to be focusing on expanding their digital presence with this deal [1] and at least in my experience, that is NOT what makes Tonx so fantastic.
It will be interesting to see where this goes.
[0]: https://tonx.org/better [1]: http://blog.bluebottlecoffee.com/post/82020818086/welcome-ab...
This is a really smart move by Blue Bottle though. Overnight, they have a Web presence and a mail-order/distribution network.
I just hope that Tonx won't lose it's laid back 'drink it how you like it' attitude in favor of the coffee Puritanism I experienced at Blue Bottle a year or two back.
Will be interested to see how it inevitably changes.
Just curious what you've seen.
I like medium roasts, every other is either lost on me or is not guaranteed to be consistent between roasts.
Pretty much none of them are ever labeled dark, medium or light roasted and instead they come up with these imaginative flavor descriptions which I never appreciated in wines and I definitely dont appreciate in coffee.
Based on my fairly good sense of smell, ive learned to distinguish medium roasts from dark and light onces because dark ones are generally too burnt and bitter for my taste while light ones are too acidic.
All of these coffee brands do have dark roasts(yes even Blue Bottle -- do you think Three Africans is light?) and medium roasts and plenty of light roasts. Its just tough to find any that are labeled as such
The flavor profiles aren't "imaginative descriptions". Yes they are very subjective, but that doesn't mean they do not exist, just that our senses aren't good at detecting & describing them. To give an example, I run an online coffee company and over the last few months we've shipped coffees that genuinely smell everything from a Papua New Guinea that smelled incredibly like chocolate & nuts through to a Yirg that smelled uncannily like strawberries & cream. Honestly I thought the last one was BS until I smelled it. I wouldn't consider that I have an amazing sense of smell but I can tell the difference between three or four unshipped types of coffee that we have in our packing space by smelling the degassing valve.
tl;dr There are so many differences between coffee beans for a description of the roast level to adequately describe them
While it doesnt mean that there are no flavor profiles on roasted coffee beans, what it means is detection of the flavor profile is probably very subjective. In my experience flavor profiles are rarely guaranteed between roasts, one thing i could always tell if this particular roast is acidic or too dark.
This is just my perception. I usually make my coffee using a Capresso Burr grinder and aeropress. You can usually find me at whole foods sniffing the timestamped paper bags of coffee until i settle on something that doesnt smell too burnt or too acidic.
Tonx -> Harry Potter character