Coffee Beans... help

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

I'm going to be quite prescriptive here if that's OK with everyone.. :) I need your recommendations for a nicely-flavoured coffee bean. Something I can find at my local Sainsbury's or similar rather than a specialist supplier. Nothing whoppingly esoteric or expensive. (Nothing that has exited the rear end of a Himalayan ocelot, for example...) Just something with a good rounded flavour that isn't bitter.

I only drink 'real' coffee at weekends which means I don't get through enough of the stuff to do a proper field test. So I keep buying packets of beans, being slightly disappointed with the results and wasting a few weeks using them up before I can try something else.

Help...

Or do I mean 'proscriptive'? See what crap coffee does to a person?

Are you looking for ground coffee, or coffee beans that you grind yourself?

For the latter, I have never found a good supermarket coffee bean :( I buy mine from a local independent shop, Whittards, or one of the coffee shops.

From supermarkets I like that fair trade lavazza - tierra I think it is called? Or illy, just because most shops have it

there is a v cheap nice one (only about £8 per kg) at nextdaycoffee called caffe Roma which is really surprisingly good I think

We have a bean to cup machine and we have tried lots of the espresso varieties etc. We find that any Colombian beans, but particularly Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Colombian beans produce a really nice cup of coffee.

I'm not a fan of the African beans - they seem to sharp and citrussy to me. The espresso varieties didn't go down well either. I can't understand why people think that bitter = good coffee

hopefully this is a link to the lavazza tierra beans

I was hoping this would be a thread about where and how to store once opened, for most of my life I have kept them in the freezer (because my mum did I suppose?) but apparently this 'kills' them and same with the fridge

now they just live on the kitchen top, spilling everywhere - lucky I get through each sack pretty quickly but where does everyone else keep theirs?

Definitely beans... whole beans. I can grind them up, no problem. Mine live in an airtight Kilner-type jar . Doesn't seem to change the flavour.

I haven't tried Lavazza. Sainsbury TTD sounds good as well.

Actually, strike that. Having looked at the ones that were disappointing this morning they were Sainsbury TTD Colombian...

Colombian seem to be the favourite here too. Tesco Finest are nice, or M&S.

We tend to buy the Monthly Espresso "coffee of the month" from the Algerian Coffee place in Soho, always tend to be good, the roast is often as impactful as the original bean.

Sunlight can also harm beans so a dark cupboard or dark jar rather than a glass one is good.