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This might seem an odd question, but it is indeed a genuine one where I presume I could get useful information. I recently have gotten into enjoying "specialty coffee" performing pour over at home (due to COVID-19). After acquiring a bag of Blue Bottle Bella Donovan, I was curious to look up the characteristics/description of the beans, from the Blue Bottle website:

Bella Donovan is the wool sweater of our blends—comforting, cozy, and enveloping. Our most popular blend, Bella is a variation of the archetypal Moka-Java pairing, in which a wild and jammy natural from Ethiopia finds balance with more substantive coffees from Sumatra and Peru. It stands on the darker side of things, weathers the rigors of the automatic drip machine well, and stands up to milk or cream—though it is just as elegant black.

I understand it is an Ethiopia/Sumatra blend. Could someone please explain to me what exactly this whole description means to someone who is new to coffee characteristics? For anyone who has had this coffee before, I genuinely would love to hear a "layman's" description of the coffee in comparison to any other coffee.

user1394
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I'm a big coffee drinker and after many different brands and roasts tried, I'm very sure coffee taste notes on the bag or website are literally just marketing and not descriptive of the coffee at all.

It's a dark roasted blend of Ethiopian, Sumatran, and Peruvian beans. It's probably going to taste like a tame (less bitter) but strong black. Don't expect anything wild like Kicking Horse, etc., and don't expect anything absurd, like fruity or chocolatey.

Coffee generally does like this: it tastes generally like coffee. Differences between blends are typically minor and nuanced things that can't be described well with words. There are notable exceptions, but still, the differences are hard to describe.

R Mac
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