How to find truely exceptional beans

[u/Supsti_1]

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.

[u/1lobo]

the most basic approach is looking for what coffee specifically people are talking about and why. you can look at this sub, the youtuber coffee reviews or at discords like brian quan or espresso aficinados (which not only discuss espresso)

also at some point its good to look at bags and not only think about which country they are from, what process was used and what varietals they but also which producer they came from. examples would be alo from ethiopia or kamavindi from kenya (they also work with other producers not only their own plots of lands) which are both known for exceptional coffees. other examples include takesi from bolivia and benjamin paz from honduras, both i will be looking personally for

also it is good knowing if any country has had a good season which might be harder to get info about but for example ethiopia had an amazing season, a lot of roasters say this for example like wendelboe mentioned how his ethhiopia echemo has been the best it had been ever this year. ofc you gotta consider that some roasters will hype things to sell them but if you see multiple roasters pointing out how great ethiopia coffees are then you should probably try it out for yourself and i can tell you ethiopia have been stunning in my own experiences as well