Life is busy and groceries are hard to keep track of. Many coffee lovers seek out coffee subscription services to avoid the disappointment of finding out they’ve run out of coffee to brew one day.
In this article, I will conduct a thorough Driftaway Coffee review.
Everything from the coffee story, sourcing practices, coffee selection, the quality and taste profile of coffees, and the excellence of the brand’s coffee subscriptions will be covered so that any coffee lover can conveniently make coffee shop quality at home.
Driftaway Coffee Review – Background
Like I’ve done with other brands offering coffee subscriptions, let’s start with the background check to get to know Driftaway Coffee.
Who Owns Driftaway Coffee Subscription?
Driftaway Coffee was co-founded by Suyog Mody and Anu Menon to fulfill their passion for creating and building something that they can be proud of and leaves them satisfied rather than being of sub-par value.
They both have been frequent coffee drinkers ever since high school. At first, they maintained the habit only for the caffeine content.
However, later on, they get to know more about the coffee gear, different coffee, all of the meticulous work going into grinding and brewing, and how great coffee is supposed to taste and worth all of the effort.
With the mission to fuel good work, the founders are set to provide high-quality freshly roasted coffee that’s curated, roasted, and distributed as best as possible even in the littlest details.
Where Is Driftaway Coffee Based?
The roaster is located in Brooklyn, New York. This is also the city where the idea for Driftaway Coffee was sparked inside their apartment.
What Is Driftaway Coffee Subscription?
The name Driftaway Coffee, which came about from hours and hours of brainstorming, is meant to describe the journey of coffee from the coffee cherries grown by coffee farmers to getting extracted to produce a delicious and aromatic cup of brew, helping people drift away from reality momentarily.
What Sets Driftaway Coffee Apart
There are a ton of coffee subscription services out there, so what has Driftaway Coffee done to differentiate itself from competitors in the market?
Home Delivery Service
If you’re a coffee drinker who brews and drinks at home, you’ve probably neglected to keep tabs on your coffee beans stock and discovered there’s not enough left to make a cup at least once or twice.
Life is hectic and there’s a lot you need to pay attention to at once so it’s perfectly understandable.
The brand provides convenient home delivery that automatically sends you fresh coffee periodically per your request. So that’s one less thing you need to write on your grocery list every week.
Coffee Farmer
SmallholderCoffee Farmers
It’s easier to source coffee from large well-established coffee farms, which is something many coffee roasters are doing to meet their constant coffee demands. This brand, on the other hand, goes out of its way to source coffee from small-scale farmers.
While not all of its coffee manages to get Fair Trade, Organic, and Rainforest Alliance certified, it takes into consideration the fact that these are much smaller farmers rather than big establishments and Driftaway Coffee isn’t as large-scale as other roasters.
So striving to get certified coffee is one thing. But on the other hand, certifications aren’t always possible.
Nevertheless, the brand makes sure to only work with importers who pay a fair livable wage to help improve their living conditions. This extends to supporting the development of the local community as well.
In addition, the brand also has sustainability programs that give back to farmers to support their livelihood.
World Coffee Research
For every pound of coffee it roasts, five cents is donated to the World Coffee Research to strive towards its long-term coffee sustainability goal of enhancing the quality of coffee and improving the farming practices and livelihood of coffee producers.
Farmer Feedback Program
Farmers never seemed to receive feedback about the coffee they produce. So this brand started this program to send customers’ reviews to the OGs that contribute to their cups of coffee.
Personalization
Every single month, consumers can discover new coffee varieties and origins to diversify and satisfy their taste buds.
Every single month, consumers can discover new coffee varieties and origins to diversify and satisfy their taste buds.
This brand provides personalized coffee subscriptions from the get-go using the tasting kit, which is basically a sample kit.
So rather than making you commit right away, you get to learn more about your personal preferences before making the final decision about the coffee subscription.
You can also customize your future shipments by sending feedback about past orders, including your impression of the flavor notes, acidity, body, and what you would like to have in your next order.
Test the beans from the initial tasting kit and giving reviews either in detail on the website or simply on its convenient iPhone app.
I will go into more detail about the tasting kit in the later part.
Fresh Coffee
The brand offers single-origin coffee that’s traceable and regularly roasted every Sunday to be shipped out so that you can enjoy the fresh taste profile of great coffees.
Buying From Driftaway Coffee
Next, I’ll explain the coffee subscription process. The Driftaway Coffee website is fairly easy to use and navigate around to find what you need.
Determine The Receiver
First of all, the brand asks you who the subscription is for. There are 3 types of offerings.
Yourself
Next, the website asks you to input the type of coffee you would like to receive, which can be either whole bean, ground coffee, or Cold Brew.
1. Whole Beans: I recommend getting whole bean coffee and investing in a quality burr grinder if you’re making coffee at home often to get the freshest brew possible. Once the beans are ground, their freshness can’t be preserved for very long.
2. Ground Coffee: If you want the convenient ground option, the brand offers several grind sizes suitable for common coffee brewing methods comprising the AeroPress, Chemex, Drip machine, Espresso machine, and French Press.
3. Cold Brew: You can also subscribe to its Cold Brew blend, which is made especially for making Cold Brew coffee. This is great for the hot summer months when you crave something cooler and more refreshing than hot coffee. These beans are usually ground coarser to optimize the lengthened extraction process to make Cold Brew coffee.
A Gift
Similarly, you can also select the type of coffee for the subscription gift as well, such as whole bean, ground, and Cold Brew bags.
Pre-ground coffee suitable for making Cold Brew is packed in these convenient portioned mesh bags ready to be brewed right away. Your option for the gift also includes a Mystery Kit that contains whole bean coffee but its name is hidden in the first delivery.
Office
If you’re trying to order a coffee subscription for your office consumption, the brand has a separate program for this type of customer.
To order, you need to fill out:
- Your name
- Position in the company
- Work email address
- Company’s website link
- Number of employees
- Rough amount of coffee the office goes through every week
- Office shipping address
- Type of coffee (whole bean, ground, brewer type if you pick the latter option, and decaf)
- Extra information that might be helpful
After submitting the survey, you get to receive a sample.
Pick The Quantity And Frequency
Next, you need to pick how much coffee you want to receive for future shipments. There are 4 options:
- 8 oz (227 g) per shipment ~ 16 cups for 1 drinker
- 12 oz (340 g) per shipment ~ 24 cups for 1 to 2 drinkers
- 1 lb (454 g) per shipment ~ 32 cups for 1 to 2 drinkers
- 2 lbs (907 g) of 2 coffees (1 lb of each) per shipment ~ 64 cups for 2 to 3 drinkers
You can choose to receive the bag of coffee either every week, every 2 weeks, or every 4 weeks. Any longer than that the coffee wouldn’t be in the freshest state.
So take a look again at how much coffee you consume on a regular basis and try to pick the appropriate amount that you can go through in a couple of weeks.
What Shipping Is Like
The brand can impressively ship both within the U.S. and outside, which is a whopping number of 56 countries in total.
For folks living in America, you can enjoy Free First Class shipping for 8 oz and 12 oz, which is in 2- 3 days to best preserve the coffee freshness until it reaches your hands.
For orders of 1 lb and more, customers get an upgrade to Free Priority shipping to receive your coffee subscription the next day the quickest, and 3 days the latest.
Coffee drinkers around the world can also expect this free shipping service. However, the price of a Driftaway subscription is subjected to variation to cover the shipping cost.
Choose The Billing Frequency
You can either choose to pay:
- Per shipment
- Every 6 months
- Every year
Prepaying can save you up to 10%. So consider this option if you fall in love with this coffee subscription and are ready for a long-term commitment.
Try The Driftaway Coffee Tasting Kit
Is Driftaway Coffee good?
Rather than making you go through a large bag right away, you’ll be welcome with a tasting kit in the first delivery to reconfirm your taste preferences and let them know what you think.
The Coffee Explorer tasting kit contains four coffees. They are 1 oz bags of different single-origin coffees that are in 4 different Driftaway roasts. And each will have varying flavor notes that might suit your taste preferences. These are:
- Fruity – Light Roast: Lighter roasts preserve more of the original complex flavor profile of coffee beans than darker roasts. So a brew made from this blend tends to be brighter and fruitier, but also higher in acidity.
The brand typically sources beans from African countries with a robust coffee market such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Tanzania.
- Balanced – Light-Medium Roast: A light-medium roast loses some of the bright, fruity, and floral qualities that are typical of light roasts. A cup of coffee brewed using light-medium roast has a balanced profile and lower in both acidity and caffeine content.
For this roast profile, the brand uses beans sourced from Central America such as Guatemala and Nicaragua.
- Classic – Medium Roast: The classic medium roast goes well with every coffee brewing method, a suitable option for coffee drinkers who aren’t super knowledgeable about making coffee. You can get a brew that’s flavorful, thicker-bodied with a bit darker and more chocolaty undertones than light roast coffee.
The beans in this bundle come from coffee-growing regions in South America, like Brazil and Colombia, so you can expect no less from the quality and taste.
- Bold – Dark Roast: Lastly, the boldest roast profile brings out more of the earthy undertones of coffee. Thick-bodied dark roast is often suitable for brewing espresso and French Press coffee. It’s also great when paired with cream and milk, especially for espresso-based drinks such as latte and cappuccino.
The origin of dark roast varies every month, so get ready to be surprised.
However, the Explorer tasting kit is only optional. You can get straight to the good part if you think you know your coffee preferences well enough already.
And like the Gift option, you can also get yourself a Mystery Coffee Explorer Kit that doesn’t specify the expected coffee origin and tasting notes so you can make judgments without any preconceptions.
This is a great idea for coffee aficionados who’ve known at least a thing or two about coffee and might be subjected to biases.
And The Cold Brew Tasting Kit
If you’re a fan of Cold Brew, you can also try a tasting kit consisting of 3 different flavor profiles before starting the subscription. Those flavors in the tasting kit are:
- Bright: A coffee lover who loves refreshing and complex tasting notes that are fruity and floral will definitely enjoy these brighter flavor notes that are also reminiscent of the local diverse nature in Africa.
- Balanced: As I’ve mentioned above, light-medium roast coffee produces an overall balanced profile and thicker-bodied brew. You can still enjoy some of the specific coffee citrussy fruity profiles and some more of the chocolate notes. The brand picks single-origin Central American coffee from small farmers for this blend.
- Bold: Dark roasted coffee can also be an interesting ingredient for Cold Brew. It’s rich. It’s bold. It tastes like chocolate and cocoa. And it makes great coffees with sweeter cream and sugar.
Driftaway Coffee Packaging
Coffee Pouches
The packaging is very minimal with recyclable & resealable paper single-bag coffee pouches, a label detailing where the coffee is from, the expected flavor profile, roast profile, and roast date. The roast date is usually within a week after roasting so you can enjoy the freshest batch possible.
Extras
You can receive a helpful brewing guide and a postcard that includes the producer’s story.
Driftaway Coffee Subscription Review 2021: Pros & Cons
Here’s a tl;dr about this coffee brand for all of the coffee folks who want a concise summary:
Pros
- Customization
- Freshness
- Samples
- Intuitive website
- Easy-to-navigate subscription process
- Think of the man who planted the tree
- Save money when paying in advance
Cons
- No decaf option on initial subscription setup (but coming soon!)
- Less variety than other brands (i.e. no blends)
To Wrap Up
To conclude, should you try Driftaway Coffee? Yes. Definitely. Absolutely.
You can enjoy making tasty coffee at home while feeling proud for having helped support the livelihood of the small-holder farmers.
And they, too, can learn how much you enjoy your cup of brew to continue making better-quality coffee.
It’s a flywheel strongly backed by the love for coffee of all people involved!