h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A friend at Uni, Alistair Stewart, came from near Kingston, Jamaica. One year he offered to bring back after Christmas my choice of some ganja or a bag of Blue Mountain coffee. I chose the coffee. It was, quite simply, superb.

A friend of mine aquired some blue mountain and I managed to wrangle a cup or two out of her because I was teh only person she knew who had a caffiterre. Great stuff indeed.

You don't have to go to Jamaica. There are shops in England which sell Blue Mountain coffee.

For example, Whittard of Chelsea (shops everywhere, online store as well) will sell you 500g of Blue Mountain for only £31.50.

I find, (and the purists might scream and shout and want my head) that you can make Blue mountain go further.....buy 500g of a normal coffee (say the Guatamalan Elephant Bean - quite a strong one, either 4 or 5 'beans' on the whittard scale) for about 9-12 quid, and 100g of Mountian Blue (about another 6-8 quid). Mix the coffees together. You will get the nice strength of the elephant bean and the rich smoothness of the blue. It does make a difference, and you _can_ taste the blue. I prefer it like this, cos the blue ain't strong enough. Try it. You might like it. It also has the enjoyable benefit of making your blue last 5 times longer. mmmmmmm.

I don't know. I'd be vary VERY wary before I mixed beans. Particularly when one set of those cost me 30 quid for 500g.

This was over ten years ago, and I didn't have any money. Mini, yes, money, no.

I was similarly skint. My friend just didn't have any cofee making equipment so I coudl bargain a few cups out of her.

Brought some back with me from Jamaica a couple of weeks ago. We went on a trip to Rasta Dennis' coffee plantation (now ran by his daughter) and got a pound of beans. Still haven't tried the factory processed version however (the stuff we brought back was hand roasted on the plantation and has a lovely smokey taste) so I might have to splash out on some at UK rates for comparison.

Wow, hand roasted. Enjoy knowing we are all collectively envious.

Blue mountain beans can only be exported from Jamaica with a licence issued by the coffee board...so you need to be a serious player to import green beans and roast them commercially. The cheapest place I have found BMC is [URL removed by moderator]its ground and vacuum packed from the Jablum factory..(not sure this affects quality for your average punter) and will deliver first class mail for free in the UK. The Blue Mountain Coffee shop in London has recently closed which used to be an outlet for Jablum. I also believe Jablum supply Whittards who sell it under their own name.

So we can say Whittards but not JuteBay Mr/Ms/Mrs Moderator?
Relax..have a coffee!

Whittard of Chelsea may well sell it but they sell it SO expensive! If your lucky enough to go to jamaica it can be picked up for a fraction of the cost of UK prices.

Mountain Kenya is a similar and much cheaper alternative.