Dallmayr d'Oro "Selection of the year 2022: Hakuna Matata" (coffee review)
Eventually tasty at the cost of my sanity...
Is there anything cooler than a “selection of the year” special edition? No? I have to admit it was the primary reason for which I got this coffee. To feel special.
Did it make me special, though? Not really. This coffee by the well-known brand Dallmayr made me feel frustrated and angry, though — more about that in this review. Definitely not Hakuna Matata:
The saying Hakuna Matata comes from the language Swahili, which is widespread in eastern Africa. It means freely translated: “Everything is in perfect order!”
TLDR: I did drink it, so you do not have to.
Beans overview
Arabica and robusta mix (no ratio mentioned, origin described as “east Africa”), semi-dark roast, a mess of chaff, and inconsistent beans.
Thanks to the mix of arabica and robusta beans, this coffee looks fairly inconsistent and just… weird (just by looking at the beans you can say which are arabica: kind of dark, matte, and small; and which are robusta: larger, rounder, and shinier). I feel like the ratio is 5-10% of robusta, for some reason. To add to the injury, even the beans of one type were not really consistent at times 🤷🏻♂️
This coffee looks like it’s inconsistently roasted thanks to the rather weird mix-in of robusta beans.
The roasting date was printed on the package — my package was roasted about 2 (or 3?) months before I got it, which is great and a sign of good quality. Sold in a 1kg bag with the CO2 valve.
No stones and no other nasty surprises, but the amount of chaff1 was a bit… much. I had to clean my measuring bowls quite often and definitely did not enjoy that. I suppose my grinder requires proper cleaning-through.
R.I.P. my grinder thanks to all that chaff…
In general, I was a bit surprised by the quality of that coffee — I am a massive fan of Dallmayr and their packaged ground coffees are my go-to coffees for years. Their Hakuna Matata though… meh. I will try their standard d’Oro Crema at some point 😅
Score: 6/10 — huge letdown Dallmayr, you were the chosen one! (the inconsistencies and the amount of chaff: not cool)
What is the taste?
The package for some reason lists both roasting AND strength and in hindsight that should have been a big red flag for me 💀 It also promises “pronounced fullness and aromas of dark chocolate and delicate fruit notes”.
I don’t really agree. With the dark level of roasting, this coffee was bitter but not in a caramel-or-chocolate way. It was just… burnt. Like, if you didn’t tell me it was a medium-dark roast, I would have sworn it’s the 100% dark roast.
It was also sour and acidic in a weird, kind of unpleasant way, no matter how much I dialed it in (more on that later). The only way to enjoy this coffee was to dilute it with milk and I have to admit, it did taste amazingly this way (but still not as good as my previous coffee 🤔).
As a black coffee, it was weird, unbalanced, too strong, and in general… bad. It made me frustrated and desperate. Not the Timon and Pumba way, more like Mufasa being trampled in the canyon kind of way. At some point, I was happy that I’m getting over this coffee and will have a chance for something… nicer.
Dark chocolate + fruit notes = bitter and sour
Score: 5 / 10 — it eventually did taste acceptably, but the struggle was not worth it; it tasted sour no matter how well it was dialed in, what a shame.
Was it hard to dial in?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Never again, yes. After the smooth and enjoyable ride that Schwiizer Schüümli gave me at a relatively similar roasting level, etc. I have to admit: Hakuna Matata was a nightmare.
I hated these beans, I hated myself, I hated my coffee machine 💀
I don’t think I’ve ever felt that amount of frustration with anything food-related. Not even making croissants in the middle of a Berlin summer compares to this level of soul-crushing frustration. I feel like making them in a sauna would be a funnier experience than dialing in that coffee.
It took me about 2/3 to 3/4 of the bag to dial in this coffee— let that sink in: the majority of the coffee made with those beans was meh at best. And then, it was still barely okay rather than OMG yaaas queen! kind of vibe.
I don’t know if it was the robusta in the blend, but it was always a bit sour. And we know that sour is bad. Sour = under-extracted. We don’t want sour, we want zingy and exciting.
Hakuna Matata was a hard choice between “just sour” and “bitter… and a bit sour”
My grinder setting was 6.12 and I considered moving it to internal setting 5.1 or even 4.1 to grind finer because this coffee was like avocado: raw for 2 weeks, then good for 30 seconds, then immediately bad.
It was extremely hard to get a proper 1:2 ratio shot at an acceptable flow rate, I never got there even though the shots eventually tasted good at the cost of my sanity.
Score: 2/10 — always kind of sour, almost impossible to dial in, annoying.
Do I recommend it?
I would rather eat broken glass than drink this coffee ever again. And I say that as a long-time fan of Dallmayr coffee, which is my favorite brand, ever. Their Prodomo ground coffee is what I put into everything from drips, French press, moka pot, everything. And it always tasted good.
That’s why I feel betrayed by that “special edition” blend. I feel stupid. I feel emotions that I never, ever, wanted to feel when it comes to the happiness and joy that is brewing coffee. I really wanted to enjoy this coffee and I was tremendously excited to try it!
When I, eventually, managed to get a tasty shot out of this blend, it was just an okay base for cappuccinos and flat whites. My partner was happy though because I asked him to try this coffee black only once and it was a rather watered down, kinda sloppy, sour americano. It was over 2 weeks ago and I still try to wash that terrible taste off my soul. I am sorry. So, so, so sorry.
Total score: 13 / 30 — 43%, I would rather chew on broken glass 🤮
Price: 16.90€ / 1kg — this price is disgustingly high for the experience, the only saving grace is I actually did manage to get it at a discount (and, interestingly it was discounted from 14.99€)
What’s coming next?
I’m in the process of dialing in and reviewing my new bag of coffee — stay tuned!
Do you want to see me review a particular coffee? Well, you’re lucky because it’s definitely possible for paid subscribers to recommend the next coffees! :-)
Chaff is the leftover skins of the coffee bean that are peeling off during the roasting process; they leave a somewhat unpleasant dirty taste and muddy up the coffee quite a bit — you do not want them.
X.Y means internal level X and external level Y — this information is not a strict guideline since your grinder will be completely different but it can give you a general idea of the dialing in effort and parity between different beans.