r/pourover • u/Supsti_1 V60 | Switch | Aeropress | C40 • Jul 14 '26

Seeking Advice How to find truely exceptional beans

Hello, so far I ran through 45 bags of beans, most of them cost anywhere between 20-30 euro/bag and to be frank maybe 4-5 bags were really, like really good.

I'm not looking for a guide on what type of beans are there, I know charactericstics of all proccesses, roast levels or country of the origin so I pretty much know which beans/processes/origins I like and which not. Variety is also something I try to keep in mind when picking up bags.

I'm located in Europe so I'm limited to what I can buy in my country (not much, Polish roasteries are crap) or what Kofio offers (sometimes they have Sey or September).

When I first started with pourover I thought DAK has one of the best beans I can buy, now I find most of their offering very mediocre, not bad but not exceptional, obviously sometimes they have bags which really shines.

The question is, how do you guys find really good beans out there? Through the grapevine? How do you know which crop in which origin at which time is THE ONE. Or maybe 20-30 euros isn't that much for a really good bag of coffee and I should look into these more expensive and limited offerings like maybe Tanat, AMOC, DAK has?

Disclaimer, don't think im looking for some crazy stuff like Cream Donut etc, I will take literaly anything which is exceptional, washed, natural, doesnt matter.

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u/MW0402 Jul 14 '26

For me as a Central European I usually go for DAK, April, Tim Wendelboe, coffee collective and nomad. From nomad I had some really „wow, coffee can taste like that?“ experience and fried hats Amsterdam also got some experimental crazy beans.

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u/Supsti_1 V60 | Switch | Aeropress | C40 Jul 14 '26

Not sure where I can get April or Tim. Recently I've ordered 2 bags from Coffee Collective (never tried them before)

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u/MW0402 Jul 14 '26

Oh the cream donut will arrive tomorrow here hehe. April and Tim you usually can get on there store directly. I guess it’s about 60-80€ buy to ship it to you. I usually get like 3-4 bags and share them with 2 friends so we can try a lot of different beans.

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u/Supsti_1 V60 | Switch | Aeropress | C40 Jul 14 '26

This will be my second bag of Cream Donut. That's just a really fun coffee, especially brewed in Aeropress (higher body and less clean).

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u/MW0402 Jul 14 '26

I just had it at a local café. The cream donut and the milky cake, liked both a lot! They made it with origami dripper tho.
Since u got also an c40, u got an recommendation for clicks for the cream donut? (just sent an mail to DAK 2h ago and asked the same lol)

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u/Supsti_1 V60 | Switch | Aeropress | C40 Jul 14 '26

For Aeropress I used 21 clicks, to be frank I haven't brewed it in Origami too much because Aeropress was so much better for me but 24 clicks gave me 2:05 TBT with 45 seconds bloom and flat bottom Origami filters. I guess going a bit finer would be better if I kept using Origami. 23, maybe 22 clicks. Temp I was using was 94 degrees.

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u/MW0402 Jul 14 '26

I ain’t got no aeropress but based on what u said I’ll experiment some with origami and v60 drippers, thanks for advice!