Coffee Reviews

Now Brewing: Peru Baltazar Guerrero from Brandywine Coffee Roasters

May 31, 2021 By Michael 1 Comment

When I started this coffee blog 9 years ago with two friends, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to write about.

First and foremost, I wanted to write about cafés. I fell in love with coffee shops before I started drinking black coffee. I had a personal blog where I talked about the coffee shops I went to and those posts would get the most traffic. It seemed like a natural progression to start a website that would guide people to the best coffee shops, and thecoffeecompass.com was born.

What I didn’t want to write were coffee reviews. At the time there was a glut of coffee blogs focusing on coffee reviews, assigning points or stars, quibbling over tasting notes. It felt tedious to me. So I made a decision: no coffee reviews. In the early days, we received almost weekly inquiries from roasters that offered to send us coffee, and though we happily received any free coffee a roaster wanted to send us, we made it clear we weren’t going to review it on this website….

5 Southern Coffee Roasters You Must Try Now

August 18, 2014 By Guest 12 Comments

There’s an old idiom—“When it all goes south…”—that is commonly used to describe something that is declining in value or quality. One could justifiably argue that the state of Southern coffee roasters has “gone south.”

Now, I’m a Chicagoan and, to me, everything below Interstate 80 is “the South;” but, with this piece, I’m going to try to redeem that old expression.

While the West coast and major metropolitan areas like Chicago and New York City have been engulfed by specialty coffee, the “third wave” is also slowly “going south.” Southern states—collectively, even—may not have the sheer quantity of critically acclaimed and nationally renown specialty coffee roasters that, say, Portland, Seattle, or San Francisco have, there are several operations that definitely stand out.

Here are five Southern coffee roasters that you must check out:

CREMA: Nashville, Tennessee

Of all the South’s major metropolitan areas, I don’t think the …

Review: Mikkeller Koppi Coffee IPA – Tomahawk x Guji Natural

August 27, 2012 By Darren 3 Comments

Here at the Coffee Compass, alcohol consumption isn’t really our bag. Michael is blessed with Celiac Disease, and Stephen simply abstains. This doesn’t mean that we don’t know craft beer when we see it (or rather, when we overhear someone talking about it, hear that a local brewpub is serving it, and then thereafter — like all things — we google it)….