What's Coffee Got To Do With It?

Kevin gave me a Christmas gift...with conditions.  Who does that (other than said Kevin)?   The gift was a bag of 53x11 Coffee's The Early Break. The condition was that I had to write a review of the product. How does this relate to TMPC you ask? Loosely, I'll admit. Rather than give Kevin the glory of posting my review, I'll keep the number-of-blog-posts point for myself. Catch Kevin's review here.

53x11 Coffee sells fair trade organic coffee, the best they claim (Fair Trade sounds nice though I'm skeptical of the certification process...not that I have insider information or know anything about it...I'm just skeptical). Interestingly, the company started as a way to get unaffiliated coffee drinking cyclists (without a team) together. There's the Physical tie-in...cycling. On the Mental side, coffee is sweet (if one puts enough sweetener into it, which I'm trying to ween myself off of)! It relaxes my mind and brings a smile to my face. Yes loose, but somewhat related to TMPC.

I even included the logo...where's my sponsorship money?

To put my review in perspective, a bit about my coffee drinking habits. My go to brand is Eight O'Clock because it's got the best quality-to-price ratio I've found.  It's a slight step down from Peete's in quality (at half the price) and far superior to the what Folgers claims is coffee (at not much more in price). To back me up, Consumer Reports just named Eight O'Clock's Columbian Roast as the #1 best buy. That's my framework...I've tried quite a few brews over the years, but I'm not a coffee connoisseur. On to the review!

The Early Break is a high quality brew, rich in aroma and taste. The increase in quality over Eight O'Clock was noticable from the first sip. I would compare The Early Break's quality to Peete's...TEB might be a bit better. It's been my experience that organically grown beans are richer than non-organic ones and that experience held true with The Early Break. I could taste the animal dung (I mean ORGANIC) influence in the final product...yum yum! A 12 oz. bag of The Early Break can be yours for only $11.49 plus $4.95 S&H ($4.95 S&H covers up to 3 bags). For that price, 53x11's The Early Break won't take over my go to status, but I'd definitely choose it again for an intermitten coffee treat.