You know that feeling when you crave a perfect cup of coffee, crafted by the best coffee baristas? How about the feeling of knowing you’ll have to go to the coffee house and wait in line even though it’s crowded? Have you ever waited in line for a coffee, and the queues are so long that you think to yourself, “why can’t I have this coffee at home instead?”
Well, my friends, you are in luck. The very best ground coffee can be purchased from your grocery store or delivered right to your door through amazon.com. Using a home coffee maker, you can now have industry-standard coffee without the labor or cost of having to integrate with society.
I am, of course, being facetious. There are many coffee brands that we love and wish we could enjoy more. You may be surprised to know that some of the biggest and the best coffee brands such as McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Starbucks are all available as store coffee to brew and enjoy in your own home.
“But wait!” I hear you shout through a haze of vape smoke and bear claws, “which brand of coffee is the best ground?” It just so happens that we have scoured the cyber-plains of amazon.com and ranked our favorite ground coffees just for you. Take note that all of these fantastic products do require a home coffee maker to brew. But trusts us, with flavors like these, it’s most definitely worth the investment. Let’s begin, shall we?
View The Best Ground Coffee Below
1. McCafe Premium Medium Roast Ground Coffee Blend
McDonald’s coffee brand steals the crown for best overall with its finely ground coffee and universally loved flavor. Like a Big Mac or quarter pounder, the McCafe Premium Roast has a unique flavor that just simply tastes like Mcdonalds. With such brand recognition and a reliable coffee taste, you might even earn advertising fees if you start breaking out the McCafe for your coffee mornings. Probably not, though.
The 100% Arabica beans have been sourced from Colombia and Brazil and deliver a smooth and satisfying cup of coffee every time. The McCafe range in a proud supporter of the Rainforest Alliance, so knowing that you’re helping sustainability around the world is going to make your cup of coffee taste a little sweeter.
The McCafe premium coffee blend comes available in 24oz or 30oz cans, and even if the medium roast isn’t quite your preferred blend, there are plenty of other McCafe blends to choose from. As far as we’re concerned, though, this is the best ground coffee and we’re lovin’ it!
Other blends of coffee include:
- French Roast Coffee
- Breakfast Blend Coffee
- Colombian Coffee
- French Vanilla Coffee
- Hazelnut Coffee
- Espresso Roast
Pros:
+ Part of the Rainforest Alliance
+ Range of blends
Why We Like It – It’s the familiar McDonalds’ taste we’ve come to know and love in the comfort of your own home. What’s not to like?
2. Starbucks Medium Roast Ground Coffee
Starbucks is one of those coffee brands that immediately comes to mind when we think about coffee. Within their 48 year career, they have amassed over 30,000 coffee shops around the world, so it’s safe to say they know a thing or two about good coffee. Their medium roast ground coffee comes in 10, 11, or 12-ounce packs and can be purchased in packs of 3-6. But that’s not all. These multipacks come as a set of three unique medium roast blends for your tastebuds to explore.
The Pike Place roast blend took its name from Starbucks’ foundation at Pike Place Market back in 1971, and it teases your tongue with a smooth and balanced taste. Next, the Starbucks house blend gives you the medium roast you know and love with notes of cocoa and nuts. Finally, the Breakfast Blend gives you a roast that sits on the lighter side of flavor. It’s the best way to start your day, with a crisp and delicious taste that may give you a little more spring in your step.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the massive range of Starbucks blends. Over 15 individual flavors and 11 various three packs are available to order (some depending on seasonal supply).
Other coffee blends and flavors include:
- Bright Sky Coffee
- Caramel Coffee
- Cinnamon Dolce Coffee
- Morning Joe Coffee
- S’ mores Coffee
- Sumatra Coffee
- Veranda Coffee
- Various decaf coffee blends, including Pike Place.
Pros:
+ The taste of Starbucks in your own home
+ Multipacks allow you to indulge and try new blends
Why We Like It – It’s the taste of Starbucks without the clickity-clack of laptops in a busy coffee shop.
3. New England Coffee Blueberry Cobbler
“Blueberry cobbler in a coffee? Have you completely lost your mind?” we hear you ask.
But this medium roast of 100% Arabica grounds dares to be different with its spices of blueberries. It can be used in either hot or cold coffees and is best enjoyed in the morning or midday for a unique and memorable cup. The New England Coffee company has over 100 years of brewing and roasting experience. You don’t spend that long in the coffee business without learning to shake things up a bit.
This delicious ground coffee is gluten-free and kosher so everyone can enjoy its adventurous and bold taste. The freshest of coffee beans have been sourced from South and Central American and Africa to ensure a blend unlike any other. Packs of ground coffee are available in 10, 11, or 12 ounces sizes, and if blueberry cobbler doesn’t tickle your intrigue, then there are nine more inventive and truly unique flavors to try. Only true masters of coffee creation could combine these wild new flavors and still retain a smooth taste that brings 100 years of roast into a single cup.
Other flavors of coffee include:
- Butter Pecan Coffees
- Hazelnut Creme
- Pumpkin Spice Coffees
- Donut Shop Coffees
- Cinnamon Hazelnut Coffees
Pros:
+ Can be served hot or cold
+ One hundred years of flavor expertise.
Why We Like It – The bold and original flavor or blueberry cobbler makes this brew stand out from any other.
4. Dunkin’ Donuts Original Blend Ground Coffee
Nothing says America like Dunkin’ Donuts, and now you can have that signature ground coffee taste in your morning cup of joe every day. Each 12-ounce bag of this brown gold comes pre-ground for easy brewing and can make up to 40 cups of delicious coffee. Only the best grounds of Arabica beans are selected to give you a smooth and full-bodied flavor every time. With an approximate 95mg of caffeine per serving, there’s a reason “America runs on Dunkin’.” Every cup of coffee will have you fired up to face the day at your best and leave your taste buds wanting more. Dunkin’ Donuts coffee bags are specially designed for easy storage and ensure your coffee grounds stay fresher for longer, so you get the great signature taste you deserve. You can even use these grounds for cold beverages when you’ve been working extra hard on those hot days. With a range of flavors to choose from, you’ll have to work even harder to find a coffee better than Dunkin’ Donuts.
Other flavors of coffee include:
- Dunkin’ Dark Ground Coffees
- Hazelnut Ground Coffees
- French Vanilla Ground Coffees
Pros:
+ High caffeine content
+ Can be served hot or cold
Why We Like It – America runs on Dunkin’, and we do too! Every cup tastes fresh, thanks to the easy seal and storage package design.
5. Eight O’clock Ground Coffee
The Eight O’clock coffee brand has over 150 years of experience of roasting fresh beans and turning it into the brown liquid gold we know and love. This medium blend is their best, oldest, and most iconic recipe, finely ground and packaged in the USA. A sweet and fruity taste will charm your senses with 100% arabica ground coffee that brings the essence of a simpler time into your coffee cup. It offers a balanced and consistent taste from your first sip to your last gulp.
The Eight O’clock medium roast is kosher certified and comes in a 36-ounce pack, which can be purchased in bundles of up to 4 packs from amazon.com or your local grocery store. There is also a wide range of other flavors and infusions available, but we just can’t get enough of the tried and tested original blend. One hundred fifty years of good coffee flavor can’t be wrong.
Other flavors of coffee available include:
- French Vanilla Coffees
- Columbian Peaks Coffees
- French Roast Coffees
- Dark Italian espresso
- Hazelnut Coffees
- High and low caffeine infusions
Pros:
+ Kosher certified
+ large 36-ounce packs
Why We Like It – One hundred and fifty years of flavor go into every cup of Eight O’clock coffee, and we can’t get enough of it. This is some of the best ground coffee you can get your hands on.am
6. Gevalia House Blend Ground Coffee
This sophisticated and bright coffee is made from 100% arabica coffee beans and offers a rich and medium-bodied flavor. Gevalia doesn’t want or need to dabble in the experimental infusion of wild flavors for its coffee. Instead, they focus on perfecting the classic ground coffee roast to the best of their ability and succeed in doing so.
Their best ground coffee brings an aromatic taste with undertones of caramel that blends effortlessly with milk, even when cold brewed. The mild roasted beans are kosher certified and come in a 20-ounce bag that stores easily. This makes sure your grounds stay fresh until the last cup of coffee out of the bag. Even the best grocery store coffee has nothing on this.
Other blends include:
- Mild Roast Coffee
- French Roast Coffee
- Columbian Roast Coffee
Pros:
+ Kosher certified
+ Can be served hot or cold
Why We Like It – The aromatic flavor and caramel undertones make this a delicious and memorable beverage for any time of day or night
7. Death Wish Coffee Company Ground Coffee
Death Wish is a brand of coffee that immediately screams in your face and wants to be noticed. From your first look at it, the skull and crossbones on the all-black packaging lets you know that this is a blend of ground coffee that’s not messing around. Death Wish promotes itself as the world’s strongest and best ground coffee, bolstering a smooth dark roast with a bold flavor so strong it almost physically assaults you. Powerful notes of cherry and chocolate resonate in your senses like the distortion from a guitar and leave you feeling energized and at your best.
This coffee has a higher caffeine content than standard blends, so if you’re someone who needs a hard kick to get going in the morning, then this is the best ground coffee you can get. This coffee is Black Sabbath in liquid form. It’s dark as the night and comes in 1, 2, and 5-pound packs. Pounds, not ounces; even the weights are heavier. And yet, with such bold and metal influence, Death wish coffee is one of the most sustainable and ethically sourced coffee companies on our list.
It is USDA certified as fairtrade and organic, promising no additional additives or artificially increased caffeine. The slow-roasted Arabica and Robusta beans are prepared in small batches no bigger than 65lbs to ensure freshness and the best quality of their product. This is coffee made for the metalheads.
Other coffee blends and flavors include:
- K-cup coffee for espresso machines
- Death wish Valhalla Java
- Death wish Pumpkin Spice ground coffee
Pros:
+ Available as K-cups
+ Fairtrade and Organic
Why We Like It – This coffee has an identity and flavor we can get behind, which may earn it a spot on the best ground coffee list alone. We love it.
8. Peet’s Coffee Major Dickason’s Blend
The Peet’s Coffee Major Dickason’s Blend supposedly takes its name and flavor from one of the early and best customers of the Peet brand. Peet’s Coffee was founded in Berkeley, CA, in 1966, so for a single customer’s preferred brew to be still sold now means it must be coffee made well. Peet’s coffee combines the best coffee grounds from all around the world, including South America, Africa, Indonesia, and New Guinea. Their coffee beans are responsibly sourced from high elevation plains using natural volcanic soil.
It may be the fire from those volcanoes that gives the Major Dickason’s blend such a rich and smokey taste. Each batch of Peet’s Coffee beans is hand-roasted in small amounts to ensure freshness and provide a full-bodied flavor. Packets are available in 10.5, 12, and 20-ounce sizes and are available as both grounds and whole beans, so you get that perfect cup of coffee just the same as Major Dickason did.
Other coffee blends include:
- Big Bang Coffee
- Single-origin Brazil Coffee
- Colombia Coffee
- French Roast Coffee
- Major Dickason Blend Decaf
Pros:
+ Hand roasted in small amounts for freshness
+ Range of packet sizes.
Why We Like It – The idea of a single man who knew exactly how he liked his coffee so precisely that his specific blend became a company-wide phenomenon is such a wonderfully quaint concept. Tastes great too!
9. Bulletproof: The Original Ground Coffee
Bulletproof coffee takes pride in its fair treatment of workers and firmly stands as part of the Rainforest Alliance conservation effort. The organic coffee beans are hand-picked by skilled farmers who only select the very best and perfectly ripe coffee beans. Any beans that are under or overripe can have an effect on the overall taste of every blend, so Bulletproof has made sure that only the best ground coffee is roasted and blended into every pack. All of Bulletproof’s coffee beans are grown on high altitude estates in Guatemala and Colombia and farmed responsibly and sustainably.
Bulletproof takes things a step further than other coffee companies in its quality assurance. Batches of ground coffees are lab tested for toxins and consistency to ensure every individual ground is up to standard. The result is a gourmet medium roast with a full body and a well-balanced flavor.
Undertones of caramel waft through your senses while notes of cinnamon, orange, chocolate, and sweet plum leave you savoring every last sip from your cup of coffee. Bulletproof Original is one of few ground coffees that is drinkable during the intense keto diet, making it one the best ground coffees for health enthusiasts. Packs come in 12 ounces sizes and have three other tantalizing flavors to try.
Other coffee flavors include:
- Luminate Coffee
- The Mentalist Coffee
- French Kick Coffee
Pros:
+ Supports the Rainforest Alliance
+ Keto diet applicable
Why We Like It – The idea that skilled workers have such an influence on Bulletproof’s taste and end product shows how much effort goes into creating each bag.
10. Kicking Horse Coffee: Smart Ass
Right off the mark, Kicking Horse’s Smart Ass coffee wins the award for best name and slogan. Any coffee brand that prompts you to “wake up and kick ass” is definitely going to pique our interest. This delightful medium roast ground coffee is sourced from all over Africa, South, and Central America but is roasted and brought to life at the foot of the Canadian Rockies.
Smart Ass offers a wonderfully bright chocolatey flavor with a honeyed berry body. Notes of tart red currant and sugar cane linger like the remnants of a dream inside this unique and very special blend of coffee. An aroma of sweet syrup, vanilla bean, and stone fruits will fill your nostrils and charm your nose hairs like tiny snakes. It’s certified kosher, organic, and fairtrade, so your conscience will feel clearer and calmer than ever.
All of the coffee grounds are sustainably sourced, and Kicking Horse prides itself on its social and environmental accountability. All coffee from Kicking Horse comes in 10-ounce packs, and they have a range of wonderfully inventive coffee ground names and flavors to choose from.
Other coffee flavors and blends include:
- Hola Coffee
- 454 Horsepower Coffee
- Three Sisters Coffee
- Grizzly Claw Coffee
Pros:
+ Certified kosher
+ Organic and fairtrade
Why We Like It – Aside from the inventive and amusing names, the flavors of this brand speak for themselves.
Ground Coffee Buyer’s Guide
Knowing which coffee brand you enjoy is only half of the battle. In order to enjoy your cup of coffee at home, you need to master the brewing process with your home coffee maker. There are countless variables that can affect the taste of your finished brew, so be prepared for a lot of practice and probably a few failed attempts if you’re new to being a home barista. Don’t let that discourage you, though. We all have to start somewhere.
Many things can have an effect on your coffee’s flavor, but the most baseline variable is what level of roast you choose to use. We’ve put together a rundown of the three basic roast types to help you gauge where your desired flavors lie.
Light, medium, and dark roasts are not a specific system of measuring coffee taste or properties as flavors can vary from brand to brand. However, the general spectrum of coffee bean color serves as a decent enough guideline to know what type of flavor you can expect.
Light roasts
As the name suggests, light-roasted coffee beans are subjected to the lowest heat level for the least amount of time. Heating coffee beans leads to a process called “Cracking,” where the moisture is evaporated, and the bean is dried in order for it to be ground into actual coffee.
Light coffee roasts retain the most amount of natural flavor from the original bean, and this is often regarded as a more floral or aromatic taste. It also retains the most amount of caffeine as the lesser temperature has not evaporated as much of the internal bean. Light roasts indeed have the lightest shade of brown, so use this as an indicator.
Medium roasts
The next step down (or up, depending on your outlook on life) is the medium roast. These coffee beans spend longer in the roaster than light roasts and are subjected to a higher temperature. This results in more of the natural aromatic flavor being removed and is replaced by flavors brought in by the roasting process.
By this, we mean there’s a more smokey or nutty flavor associated with deeper and bolder tones and roasts. By spending longer in the roaster, more of the moisture and caffeine is evaporated, leading to a darker color and deeper cracking.
Dark roasts
Dark roast coffee spends the most amount of time in the roaster and at the highest temperature. The best indicator of dark roasts is a shiny or glossy surface on the coffee beans. This happens because the intense temperature and prolonged roasting time cause oil to release from the coffee bean and coat the outer shell. By doing this, the dark roast expunges most, if not all of the natural floral flavor of the coffee bean.
The flavor is replaced by the harsher, smokey tones of the roasting process, which makes for a much bolder and richer taste. As you can probably assume, spending the most amount of time in the roasted means that dark roast coffee exhibits a much darker and sometimes almost black pigment.
Also, almost all of the moisture has evaporated from the beans and leaves behind the smallest amount of caffeine (compared to lighter roasts). Some coffee brands will re-add or enhance the caffeine content of dark roast coffee to offer the same motivational fix as lighter roasts. However, whether you want to indulge in a roast that contains these additives is up to you.
Tips for brewing your perfect cup
1. Keep your coffee machine in good working order and clean it regularly.
It can be a chore to clean your coffee machine after every use, but doing so will prevent any build-up of old grains and milk that can have an adverse effect on the finished flavor of your coffee.
2. If you’re using an espresso machine don’t over tamp and tamp evenly.
Tamping is the process of putting your ground coffee into the coffee machine filter and pressing it down with a special tool to form a sort of coffee puck. Boiling water will then filter through this puck and drain into your coffee cup. Overfilling the filter on any type of coffee machine means that the water will not drain through properly and lead to irregularities in flavor and even loose grounds making their way into the cup.
3. Practice and be patient.
Some baristas will work and train for years before they are able to produce the best consistent ground coffees every time, and you will be no different. Learn from mistakes and record what you do each time you brew a cup until you find the balance and tweaks to get it right.
Questions
Can I use coffee grounds the same as instant coffee and vice versa?
No, brewing coffee grounds as you would instant coffee will just yield you a cup of brown sludge that needs to be drained. Using instant coffee in a coffee machine defeats the point of the coffee machine in the first place and may, in some cases, cause damage.
Which is better? Whole beans or pre-ground?
We would argue that whole beans are better purely on the basis that grinding them at home gives a slightly fresher taste. With that being said, there are plenty of perfectly good ground coffees out there, such as the ones on our list, that will save you the effort of grinding and the need to purchase an additional coffee grinder.
What is meant by “full-bodied” or “full-body” coffee?
A full body coffee refers to the taste of the coffee, not the strength. It’s possible to have a weak coffee made by a ratio of more water and fewer grounds that are still classed as full-bodied because of the base flavor brought through by the coffee beans. A full-bodied flavor implies a taste with multiple notes or complexities.
