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Peet’s Coffee Subscription Review & Unboxing

If you’re looking to expand your coffee palate with single-origin coffee beans, give Peet’s Kenyan Auction Lot a try. This roast provided a flavorful, aromatic brew, and the subscription process couldn’t be simpler for at-home coffee brewers.


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Dark roasted coffee is a must-have for any coffee lover that enjoys brewing coffee at home, and Peet’s Kenyan Auction Lot Roast is the perfect balance of authentic single-origin coffee beans and evenly roasted, rich, robust coffee beans. 

Peet’s Coffee has been perfecting the art of crafting artisan quality coffee for over 55 years now. In addition to this, they’ve also perfected the art of roasting single-origin Kenyan coffee. Combined, these two skills have resulted in one of Peet’s most beloved dark roasts: the Kenyan Auction Lot. 

We got the chance to review this delicious coffee for ourselves, and to put it plainly: we were impressed. Read our full review of this delicious roast below!

Related: The Best Coffee Subscription Box

Peets Coffee
Peet's Coffee Subscription

The highest quality coffees from farms around the world, freshly roasted by hand to bring out every nuance, so you can taste the craft in every cup.

Pick Your Subscription

Meet Peet’s 

Peet’s Coffee Kenyan auction lot review

One of the most popular store-bought coffee brands in the United States, Peet’s Coffee has been curing morning caffeine cravings since 1966. Founded by Alfred Peet in Berkeley, California, Peet’s Coffee originally started as Peet’s Coffee, Tea, & Spices.

Because his own father owned a wholesale coffee company throughout his time growing up in Amsterdam, Peet was involved with the ins and outs of the coffee industry from a very early age. After he turned 18, he was able to expand his coffee knowledge through his time working at Twinnings Coffee Company in London in the late 1930s, as well as during his time traveling in New Zealand and Indonesia

Eventually, this led to Peet moving to San Francisco to work for a coffee and tea importer. However, this wasn’t enough for Peet. He wanted to introduce rich, artisanal roasted coffee to average American homes. Fast forward eleven years, and Peet’s Coffee, Tea, & Spices was born–and it originally sold small-batch roasted coffee beans, not brewed coffee. 

Stay Perky With A Subscription From Peet’s 

Can’t get enough of Peet’s? This is the coffee subscription that your taste buds will thank you for. Made to order and packaged almost immediately after roasting, every bag of Peet’s coffee is fresh, succulent, and robust in flavor. However, there are many more things to love about Peet’s subscriptions that set it apart from the coffee competition.

There are three different options for a subscription with Peet’s: a curated subscription, a customizable subscription, or a subscription consisting of coffee that you manually select and design. Peet’s gives you the option to build your own subscription with the coffee you personally choose, or you can allow Peet’s to curate your subscription for you based on your flavor preferences through their own Coffee Quiz. 

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All shipping is free once you choose your subscription, and if you add tea or merch to your order you can also receive up to 10% off your price! However, if you decide a subscription from Peet’s isn’t for you, you can pause or cancel your subscription at any time. Peet’s allows you to enjoy delicious coffee delivered right to your door with no hassle or hoops to jump through–all you need to do is brew and enjoy! 

Kenyan Coffee: Crazy Good Coffee

Peet’s Coffee Kenyan auction lot review

Before we get into our deep-dive review of Peet’s Kenyan Roast, it’s important to understand why Kenyan coffee beans have a special place in our hearts (and on our taste buds). Though coffee wasn’t introduced to Kenyan soil until the early 1800s by French missionaries, the crop didn’t rise to popularity until the late 1800s. 

Currently ranked as number 16 on the list of largest coffee exporting countries in the world, Kenya has risen in the ranks when it comes to global markets. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that the coffee cultivated within the country doesn’t primarily come from large corporations. In fact, 2/3 of all of the coffee produced on Kenyan soil is cultivated by small, local, family-owned farms.

As a result of this quality-over quantity-cultivation method, Kenyan coffee beans are carefully filtered through and are closely monitored to ensure that only the richest, most robust beans make it into your cup of joe. In fact, Kenyan coffee also has its own method of ranking the most distinguished Kenyan coffees, which you can learn all about, here

Peet’s Kenyan Auction Lot: Our Review

Peet’s Coffee Kenyan auction lot review

Let us introduce you to perhaps one of our favorite coffee roasts from Peet’s Coffee: the Kenyan Auction Lot. If you’re a dark coffee fanatic, the ripe notes of brown sugar, sweet berry, and citrus provide a delectable balance that makes the flavors in this dark roast both deep, robust, yet tasteful, and refreshing. 

We love the flavor, but there are also several other characteristics we love about Peet’s Kenyan Auction Lot too. As we were brewing this roast, we reflected on some of our favorite characteristics about Peet’s Coffee as a whole, and this roast embodies them all. 

The Packaging

Peet’s Coffee Kenyan auction lot review

Our first impression of Peet’s Kenyan roast? The thoughtful packaging. This Kenyan roast arrived at our door without any dings or bumps on the box. 

And though the outside looked pretty, it was what was on the inside that we really enjoyed. Not only did we receive a bag of whole bean coffee, but Peet’s also does a fantastic job of including descriptions of the coffee and information about the roast itself. 

For starters, we really enjoyed the detailed description of the roast included in the box. Not only does it provide information about the Kenyan beans, but it also provides a space for you to make your own notes regarding the flavor and coffee, but information about how long Peet’s has been offering this specific roast of Kenyan coffee. 

Whole Bean Or Ground?

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Peet’s gives you the option to decide if you’d like to grind your whole coffee beans at home (which we highly recommend), or order ground coffee-sized to your preferred brewing method.

We received our coffee as whole beans to preserve some of the freshness, but if you don’t have a suitable coffee grinder at home, Peet’s does offer grind sizes formatted for drip coffee machines, percolators, and French-presses, and even espresso brewing! We like the variety of options because it provides each home coffee brewer what he/she needs to make their brewing experience as enjoyable as possible. 

 Flavor and Brewing Methods

Peet’s Coffee Kenyan auction lot review

We’ve already explained why we’re obsessed with the flavor of the Kenyan Auction Lot, but it’s important to remember that the brewing method also directly influences how the inner flavors within the coffee are highlighted and amplified. 

For our review, we really wanted to experience the inner notes of flavor that may be harder to recognize, such as the hints of fruity berries for example. So, we decided to grind our beans to a medium grind size with our and brew our coffee pour-over style with our kettle and permanent filter from Barista Warrior

The result was a brew saturated with aromatic flavors that gave us a great introduction to the unique medley of flavors within this roast. However, we know that the average American home coffee drinker typically uses a standard drip coffee maker, and the flavors within this Kenyan roast will also be very prevalent from both manual and mechanical brewing methods alike. 

Peets Coffee
Peet's Coffee Subscription

The highest quality coffees from farms around the world, freshly roasted by hand to bring out every nuance, so you can taste the craft in every cup.

Pick Your Subscription

Roasted Date Clearly marked

One important characteristic about Peet’s Kenyan Auction Lot roast is the clearly visible label that shows when the coffee roast date. Surprisingly, there are often many coffee brands that don’t include the roast date on their bags for their customers. And as a result, coffees that don’t include a roast date often aren’t fresh enough to be enjoyed properly and are usually bitter, sour, or overall dull in flavor. 

Thankfully, Peet’s takes care of this for you. The roasting date was clearly labeled on the side of our bag, and though this may not seem like an important detail, it was important to us to see when the beans were roasted, how quickly they were packaged and shipped to our door, and how the freshness impacted the overall flavor of the coffee. 

Things to Note

One thing we here at Roasty enjoy about the coffee world is the room it provides to experiment with cultivation strategies, roasting techniques, and brewing methods, as well as overall improvement. Not all coffee brands are made the same, which is fine by our book because not every palate is accustomed to a specific roasting or flavor profile. 

The Kenyan Auction Lot has much to offer any coffee addict, but there are a few things that we noticed about this roast that could make a delicious roast even more mouthwatering. 

The texture of the beans

Peet’s Coffee Kenyan auction lot review

One thing that we noticed as soon as we opened our bag of Kenyan beans is the amount of oil on them. Though oily beans can be a sign of savory flavors that have been extracted out of the beans during the roasting process, it can also be a warning sign that the beans may be overroasted

When it comes to darker roasts, there is a fine line between rich dark flavor and dull burnt flavor that can easily be crossed. Since the Kenyan requires a longer roasting time to get that robust dark roast, it can be easy to accidentally burn beans if not careful. 

Thankfully, our bag of beans wasn’t burnt at all, but the oil is a sign that some of Peet’s batches of Kenyan Auction Lot can be slightly more overroasted than others. 

The Semi-Sealable Bag

Peet’s Coffee Kenyan auction lot review

Though this isn’t really a critique of the beans themselves, one thing that we did note is the lack of being able to fully reseal the bag. Unlike other coffee brands who ship their coffee in Ziploc style bags, Peet’s simply uses the plastic tabs to hold the top of the bag in place after you’ve folded it closed.

Though this isn’t the worst method to store coffee beans, it does allow more room for extra air to leak in and potentially harm the overall freshness and quality of the beans. And with a roast like the Kenyan Authentic Lot, we’d hate to see the savory and mouthwatering qualities of these beans dulled to the accidental exposure of air leaking into the bag.

So, with this roast, we actually recommend taking all of the beans out of the bag and storing them in a completely sealable container to preserve the quality of the beans. 

Peets Coffee
Peet's Coffee Subscription

The highest quality coffees from farms around the world, freshly roasted by hand to bring out every nuance, so you can taste the craft in every cup.

Pick Your Subscription

The Verdict

Ultimately, Peet’s Coffee is designed to best accommodate the at-home coffee brewer, and the Kenyan Auction Lot Roast definitely deserves a spot on your kitchen shelf. In particular, we believe Peet’s Kenyan Auction Lot roast is also ideal for the home coffee drinker who’s trying to expand and refine their coffee palette through experimenting with single-origin coffees. 

We hope you enjoy brewing Peet’s Kenyan Auction Lot as much as we did and as always, 

Happy caffeinating! 

Peet's Coffee Subscription Review: Put Peet's On Autopilot!
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Peet's Coffee subscription delivered us a Kenyan Auction Lot Roast that we loved. Read our full review of their subscription here!

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Editor's Rating:
4.4
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