‘For the Love of ‘Fee’ is one coffee-lover’s attempt to machete through the tangle of coffee beans and brews to find an awesome cup of coffee. Juan Valdez follows ME! 🙂
Deets
This coffee came into my life a couple of weeks ago, thanks to my friend Aaron at Keeps Me Alive! (Read more on that here!) A recent jaunt to Toronto offered him the opportunity to stop by his favourite coffee destination, Moonbean Coffee Company and pick up one of his favourite roasts, Devil’s Brew. Of course, being a java lover myself, he was gracious enough to send me a lb of beans through Canada Post. I imagine its smell intoxicated the mailman, and everyone I share a community mail box with as it was obvious coffee was packed in the box Aaron sent me – a bold, but glorious aroma of coffee permeated. I must submit, Moonbean is quickly becoming a favourite coffee of mine, even though I have never stepped foot in the joint!
Description
When I first looked at the bag of beans, I originally thought the name of the brew was “Devil’s Bone”* which, wound up to be just how Aaron scribbled the name on the bag. I confirmed the true name via email, and Aaron and I had a good “LOL” (insert dirty minded thoughts about bags, beans and bones here. Go on, guys…I’m waiting…;)).
After I had finished my bag of Kicking Horse Three Sisters coffee, I then started in on the Devil’s Brew, and just enjoyed it every morning, until we arrive at this morning when I discovered I only had enough grounds for one more pot of this glorious brew!
Oh oh! Better get on that ‘fee review before it’s ALL GONE!
How It Smells and Tastes
Devil’s Brew lives up to its name, particularly when the beans are ground. The aroma is robust, almost fiery! I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but I can smell hints of hickory, chilies and…garlic? as an after-scent. The whole house smells divine! The taste of this coffee is also something to behold: not as bold in taste as the grounds would have you believe, but it’s smooth with a slight kick that will get your bag of bones going in the morn’!
So. If you are ever in Toronto proper (which I avoid most of the time) near Kensington Market, check out Moonbean’s brews. They are the Devil’s Brew, and they are divine!
10/10
Thanks again to Aaron at Keeps Me Alive for enlightening me once again with the gift of coffee! 🙂
More from the Moonbean line: Heaven Roast
P.S.
A word about the cup (’cause I’m sure you wanna know…)

“Coffee, tea and R n’ B. We’re really cookin’ ! What exactly, we’ll leave that for you to figure out…”
Casey’s Bar and Grill is a restaurant chain that originated in Sudbury, Ontario, but has several locations around Ontario and Quebec. In 1996, they had a promotion where if you order dessert with your meal, you’d get a free coffee and a keepsake mug. The mug, as you can see, has poorly executed caricatures of four popular recording artists, excluding B.B. King (RIP). I somehow wound up with three of these mugs at one point, thanks to a thoughtful less ex-boyfriend who jokingly figured that my one mug I acquired at a birthday dinner wasn’t enough. (In an unrelated bitter story, the cheap bastard actually wrapped one of these up for me for Christmas! Cool story, bro.)
My husband hates this mug. I hang on to it because of B.B., the practicality of having something to drink out of and for shits and giggles, but it is quite unattractive drinking coffee out of a mug with Mick Jagger’s face looking like it was hit by a bus…
I didn’t realize Casey’s was began in the big Nickel, well done Sudbury – and the moonbeam sounds deelish!
(enjoyed your use of the term ‘divine’ – I’m told I overuse that when praising food so I’m glad to see I’m in good company!)
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Yes, it used to be called Casey’s Roadhouse, and its original location had the restaurant with an old train caboose at the end of it. They used to let kids take a tour of it. The restaurant has since been moved next door to more eclectic digs – sort of like an East Side Mario’s-style with bottle-glass lights and craft paper on the table. That sort of thing.
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I do hate that mug.
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THOSE CUPS RULE! Brings new meaning to “getting into the cups”.
My only beef about Moonbean is that it is incredibly small inside, and I’m a claustrophobic. Therefore the last two times in Toronto, I let Aaron go in alone.
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Yup, it’s a pretty small space. But I’d be disappointed if they upgraded to a new place with more room. We’ve been going there so long, imagining it anywhere else is just weird!
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It’s only one mug. The images wrap around the mug. I was taking pics of each image, but it’s all on one mug.
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That coffee sounds delicious!
The Tina Turner on your coffee mug looks more like Steven Tyler and I can’t even deal with Stevie Wonder, haha.
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Hooray! Another 10/10 way to go Moonbean! I’m so glad you liked it. A whole pound of something you didn’t like would’ve been terrible! Of course, it’s pretty tough to get coffee from there that’s no good, so it’s a fairly safe bet.
Anyhoo, always glad to share! Looks like I shoulda got you another lb. (maybe even of a different kind yet again!) when I was there last week! Haha good coffee never lasts long enough.
So I have to ask: which did you prefer? Heaven or Hell? Haha.
Those caricatures on those mugs hurt my head. Just yikes.
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That sounds like a mighty fine coffee … top marks, eh. That’s the kind o’ coffee I need to be drinking every day … the mugs are pretty sweet also.
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Hey J. I called Canada Post to find out if I can mail coffee from my town to your town, and I can! The dude on the phone (his name is Abdul) was very helpful. He did mention that I am unable to mail semen. Seriously, after I got done laughing at this left-field restriction, I told him it was just coffee I had in mind. Haha oh man who would mail that? Anyway. Coffee. That’s the goal here. COFFEE!
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Well there goes my dream of sending Canadian semen to Glasgow.
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I knew you’d be heartbroken, buddy.
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Hahaha, oh man bring over the veal! This is gold!
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I’m here all week.
Oh who am I kidding, I’m here all the time. I have a cot in the back, and they feed me table scraps. I shower at the Y. Please help…
😉
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Coffee! This is awesome news! Awesome!
Not so awesome news for all them Canadian folks who intend on mailing semen around the world, though.
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Yeah exactly. I guess I need a new goal.
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You guys kill me! LOL
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It’s all them, I’m just following!
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We do what we can! Now don’t hold your breath on the coffee – the next (not yet scheduled) trip to the city that I know of for me will be when Mike and I go in the fall.
What I love about the semen thing (and there’s a collection of words you don’t type every day… maybe every other day, but not every day, honestly) is that they had enough of a problem with it somehow that they had to make a rule about it.
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I’m gonna have a lot of spam for all the semen that is getting talked about here…
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Yeah actually I’m in the middle of bbqing chicken breasts (BEWBS!) and I thought you know, I’d better apologize for hijacking Sarca’s comments section with semen. Sorry about that! 🙂
Also, my lovely wife says it’s likely not human semen they had a problem with – it’s more likely agricultural, like bull or ram or whatever. She’s probably right (she usually is) but I think it’s funnier the other way.
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Yeah, she is probably right – animal husbandry, or something. LOL, hijacking with semen…and a bit of ew, too…
chicken BEWBS!
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She almost always is right. It’s amazing. I’m a lucky guy, because I mess up a lot. She saves the day, and she looks damn fine while she does it!
It could potentially be human semen, I mean, if the internet has proven anything, Rule 34 can apply to people and their insane actions, too.
The chicken bewbs look so tasty. I am a master bbq-er. Tonight it’s Guiness bbq sauce ohhhhhh baby!
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Your wife sounds lovely. K thinks I know everything. I don’t – I mean, I know a lot, but I leave room to be wrong too. And I too, mess up.
Mmm, Guiness bbq sauce! Sounds tasty! Enjoy!
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Oh she’s totally lovely. I’m smitten and the luckiest s.o.b. on the planet. She’d say the same thing as you, but I think you girls are just modest.
Gonna cut the chicken into strips over a spring mix with mandarins, cherry tomatoes and almonds. C’mon over! I’ve got red and white wine…
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See you in five hours! lol Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll still be up! 🙂
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Haha yeah, sleep’s for wimps. Once the kids are in bed (and they aren’t yet!) is the only time I can get any real work done!
But it wouldn’t be 5 hours, I looked it up on the Googles and it says 2h 31min. That’s a helluva lot closer than Deke!
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Kidding about the five hours, but I thought it was farther than 2.5 hours. Hm.
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Yup, says a bunch of stupid turns, but if you ignore most of it, what I get out of is it’s an easy shot – 404 to Newmarket, across Hwy 9 to Orangeville, straight up Hwy 10 to my town. GIVE ‘ER!
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BWAHAHAHAAAAaaaaaa! You win the comments today!
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A winner is me!
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This is GREAT news! I know JHubner is interested in a coffee swap, so this news is definitely useful! Thx for looking into this!
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No problem. It was a simple phone call to the toll-free. You should call and talk to Abdul. He’s a gas.
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Also, Sarca: that B.B. King mug on that mug looks more like a younger John Lee Hooker, to me.
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Haha, I got a Steven Tyler for Tina and a Hooker for B.B….anything is possible! (It is supposed to be B.B. King though.)
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I can kinda see it… Hm. Whomever did those, though, they must’ve been high.
Also: kudos for arranging the mugs in order so we could read the words across the top, one in each shite photie.
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It’s one mug, actually. The images wrap around the mug.
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Yup, I totally misread that. All that crazy cariacature on one mug! EVEN BETTER!
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Yeah, so I had three of these at one time…
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Ah gotcha. Yep, I need more wine. All of this talk of semen and bewbs has confused me on the mugs.
Didn’t this all start with coffee? Oh dear…
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A new brew…that’s always a good thing. And I love the name.
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Ya know, I’m looking at my handwriting on that bag, again, and it looks like ‘brew’ to me now. Like, obviously ‘brew.’ Weird.
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