If you happen to be anything like the team members here at Creative Family Moments, a good cup of coffee in the morning is likely item number one on your daily list of non-negotiables. While we might be willing to lower our standards a little when it comes to breakfast fare, office snacks, lunchtime sandwiches, and even settle for a below-par pizza at the end of the day, when it comes to coffee, only the very best will do. Finding the best coffee, however, is a tricky business, with a simple Google or Amazon search leaving us with hundreds, if not thousands, of viable options. To save you wading through those options to separate the wheat from the chaff, the meh from the marvelous, and the alright from the awesome, in this article we’ll introduce to our selection of the top 5 coffees on the market in 2020.

We reviewed dozens of coffees to identify the best of the best. We examined a range of factors, including bean type, flavor profile, taste, caffeine content, cost per ounce, and average customer reviews. All of these top-rated coffees can be purchased online at Amazon.com.

Best Coffee Overall
Community Coffee Café Special Medium-Dark Roast
This delicious, aromatic, 100% Arabica, full-bodied coffee has a rich flavor, a smooth, balanced finish, and offers outstanding value for money.

Having considered a large number of coffees, we chose Community Coffee Café Special Medium-Dark Roast as our top pick. While not quite as much a household name as Folgers or Maxwell House, in recent years this coffee has won thousands of fans on account of its rich aroma, low acidity, nicely balanced flavor profile, delicious notes of caramel and cocoa, and suitability for drinking at any time of day.

The 5 Top-Rated Coffees

Editor's PicksBrandRating
Best Coffee OverallCommunity Coffee Café Special Medium-Dark Roast4.9
Best Decaff CoffeeKirkland Signature 100% Colombian Dark Roast Decaffeinated Ground Coffee4.7
Best Budget CoffeeCafé La Llave Espresso4.9
Best Organic CoffeeMayorga Organics Café Cubano4.8
Best Fair Trade CoffeeDeath Wish Coffee Valhalla Java Coffee 4.8

*Ratings are from Amazon at the time of publication and can change

 

Best Coffee Overall: Community Coffee Café Special Medium-Dark Roast

Best Coffee Overall
Community Coffee Café Special Medium-Dark Roast
This delicious, aromatic, 100% Arabica, full-bodied coffee has a rich flavor, a smooth, balanced finish, and offers outstanding value for money.

After much consideration, the coffee that wins our vote as the best out there in 2020 is the Community Coffee Café Special Medium-Dark Roast.

This medium-dark roasted coffee boasts a subtle flavor profile and super-smooth, slightly sweet finish that make it appeal to a wide variety of palates and suitable for drinking at any time of day, whether as a waker-upper first thing in the morning, a midday pick-me-up when energy and concentration levels are flagging, or a post dinner digestif.

What we love most about this coffee is it wide-ranging appeal, a feature that owes mainly to its bold but not overbearing or harsh flavor profile, smooth finish, pleasant aroma, full-bodied texture, and low acidity and bitterness.

The Arabica beans with which this ground coffee is made are dried naturally in the sun, which locks in their flavor and highlights the beans’ sweeter taste and delicious notes of caramel and cocoa. Those beans are also responsibly sourced and makers Community Coffee commendably give back to their partners and the local communities involved in the production of their coffees through programs that support military service members, local schools, and social and economic development in growing regions in South America.

Community Coffee Café Special Medium-Dark Roast Key Features:

  • Two x 32-ounce packs (64 ounces in total)
  • Medium-dark roast
  • 100% Arabica beans
  • Responsibly sourced
  • Slightly sweeter profile with notes of cocoa and caramel
  • Suitable for use with French press, pour over, or drip-style coffee makers.

 

Best Decaff Coffee: Kirkland Signature 100% Colombian Dark Roast Decaffeinated Ground Coffee

Best Decaff Coffee
Kirkland Signature 100% Colombian Dark Roast Decaffeinated Ground Coffee
This very reasonably priced, dark roast coffee boasts a rich flavor profile and tastes as good as any other everyday non-decaff coffee out there.

The Kirkland Signature 100% Colombian Dark Roast Decaffeinated Ground Coffee is the ideal choice for buyers who are concerned about their caffeine intake but unwilling to compromise on taste in order to enjoy a caffeine-free cup of mud.

“Kirkland” is the in-house, private-label brand of Costco, but don’t let that put you off—the brand’s “Signature” range delivers on the flavor front just as well as any other gourmet, top-end coffee we know of…and, importantly, at a fraction of the price.

These beans are decaffeinated using an indirect chemical process during which the beans are heated in boiling water to release the caffeine. The caffeinated water is then removed from the beans and treated with caffeine-absorbing methylene chloride. Only after increasing the water temperature to evaporate the chemical and caffeine simultaneously is the flavor-rich water reintroduced to the beans, meaning that the methylene chloride never comes into contact with the beans but the beans retain all the flavor of regular, caffeinated varieties.

The result? A scrumptious, decaff coffee that boasts a rich, strong flavor profile not entirely dissimilar to a dark Italian roast. It’s also low on acidity, never bitter on the palate, and costs a very reasonable $0.41 per ounce.

Kirkland Signature 100% Colombian Dark Roast Decaffeinated Ground Coffee Key Features:

  • Two 48-ounce cans (96 ounces in total)
  • $0.41 per ounce
  • Certified Fair Trade
  • Dark roast
  • Low acidity
  • Decaffeinated with methylene chloride

 

Best Budget Coffee: Café La Llave Espresso Coffee

Best Budget Coffee
Café La Llave Espresso Coffee
At just $0.25 per ounce, few coffees make it quite so easy to stock up on caffeine supplies as this rich, sweet, full-bodied dark roast.

The hugely popular Café La Llave Espresso Coffee is the ideal choice of coffee for buyers who want a fresh, strong, and sweet coffee that scores just on high on taste as it does on affordability.

While this coffee costs a mere $0.25 per ounce, its low price should categorically not be taken as any indicator of a lack of quality or substandard taste. In recent years, this coffee has become a favorite amongst coffee lovers of all ilks (espresso drinkers, drip-coffee drinkers, French-pressers alike) on account of its rich, dark-roasted taste and strong aroma.

Café La Llave is full-bodied and boasts a sweet and balanced flavor profile that buzzes with a slightly chocolatey aroma and aftertaste that’s mildly bitter but never sour. Even though this is full-bodied coffee, the taste and texture is surprisingly smooth and suitable for drinking at any time of day.

Café La Llave Espresso Key Features: 

  • Three 16-ounce bricks
  • Fine ground: suitable for coffee machines, stovetop espresso brewers, and French press
  • Blended, roasted, and packed in the USA
  • Chocolatey aroma
  • $0.25 per ounce

 

Best Organic Coffee: Mayorga Organics Café Cubano

Best Organic Coffee
Mayorga Organics Café Cubano
Sourced and produced following Mayorga’s principles of traceability, collaboration, quality, fair value, and environmental sustainability, this is a great choice for coffee lovers who value brands with ethical growing and production practices as much as they do a great-tasting cup of coffee.

For buyers who place ethical production and growing practice high on their list of pre-purchase priorities, there are few, if any, better coffees out there than Mayorga Organics Café Cubano.

These dark-roasted beans are not only certified organic, non-GMO, and kosher, but are sourced and produced following Mayorga’s principles of traceability, collaboration, quality, fair value, and environmental sustainability. From the moment of planting right through to when these beans are ground and packaged, all artificial substances are avoided, meaning that in addition to being delicious and very reasonably priced, Maya Organics Café Cubano is as clean and healthy as they come.

In terms of character and flavor, the Café Cubano boasts a bold, smooth, full-bodied profile with subtle hints of vanilla and provides a dark, rich cup of coffee with a distinctive taste and a sweet, syrupy smokiness that lingers on the palate long after your last sip.

Mayorga Organics Café Cubano Key Features: 

  • 5-pound bag
  • $0.50 per ounce
  • Dark roast with smooth, bold finish and sweet notes of vanilla
  • Consciously sourced from quality-inspected, certified organic small farmers in Latin America
  • 100% USDA Organic, Non-GMO verified, Kosher

Best Fair-Trade Coffee: Death Wish Valhalla Java Coffee

Best Fair Trade Coffee
Death Wish Valhalla Java Coffee
With two times the amount of caffeine of regular cups of Java, this one’s the ideal pick for those who like their coffee to pack a serious punch.

New York-based brand Death Wish Coffee has built a bit of a cult following in recent years. While much of that owes to the brand’s claim to make the world’s strongest coffee, it’s also on account of their beans delivering one of the tastiest cups of the brown stuff ever likely to grace your palate.

Among the best of Death Wish’s brews is the Death Wish Valhalla Java Coffee, which packs enough punch to wake your average corpse but is also smooth, flavorful, and full of texture at the same time.

Described as a “high-octane” coffee, the Valhalla boasts double the caffeine content of regular java and, as such, is ideal for those mornings when you need a jolt of something serious to prepare you for the day ahead.

While highly potent and boasting a bold, strong profile, this dark-roast artisan coffee is surprisingly smooth and rich and contains sweet, nutty, chocolatey notes that delight the palate with every sip. Unlike other highly caffeinated coffees, is low on acidity and never tastes overly bitter or harsh, even without sugar or creamer.

Death Wish Coffee Valhalla Java Coffee Key Features: 

  • 5-pound bag
  • $1 per ounce
  • Dark roast
  • Low acidity
  • Sweet, nutty, chocolatey notes
  • Fair Trade and USDA Certified Organic

If you’re in search of a coffee that’s worth getting out of bed for and on a par with anything served in your local coffee shop, these top-rated coffees are a great choice. For more kitchen products, check out our reviews of the Best Electric Can Openers and the Best Pour Over Coffee Makers.