by Nigel Ong
Dark roasts are intense, with smoke, a woody taste, and deeper notes like chocolate or nuts. Some even come with leathery and peppery flavors.
What about Kicking Horse Coffee’s Grizzly Claw Roast? Will it be as intense as a… grizzly bear’s claw slamming on your face? I picked up a bag to find out.
In this review, I will sample the Grizzly Claw Roast. I’ll brew the coffee several ways and then sample it with popular flavorings. I’ll also compare the roast with relevant coffees to see if you should try it.
About Kicking Horse Coffee Grizzly Claw Roast
Kicking Horse Coffee is a Canadian company founded by Elana Rosenfeld and Leo Johnson in 1996 in Invermere, British Columbia, Canada.
From its humble operation inside a home garage, it is now widely available across North America and is wildly loved by its fans.
Central to its ethos is organic and fair trade sourcing. This means Kicking Horse Coffee is organic and sustainable for the farmers.
Aside from that, Kicking Horse Coffee is also known for their unique and playful branding. Each blend has a distinctive name and packaging. Here are some examples:
- Kick Ass: deep, dark, and delicious
- Smart Ass: bright and fruity
- Three Sisters: dried fruit, malt, coconut
- Lucky Jim: chocolatey, spicy
First Impression
Here, we have the Grizzly Claw Roast. Perhaps the nickname is to signify the intensity of this roast – something akin to having the claw of a grizzly bear smashing your face.
The packaging is similar to all other Kicking Horse coffees – black color, with a colorful logo to help you visually tell apart the roasts. While the Lucky Jim is red, with Dragon Ball-like stars, Grizzly Claw is brown, with a bear inside.
The coffee bag has the basics, proper packaging, foldable tabs, and one-way valves to keep the content fresh. You can get them in two sizes: a regular 10oz (284g) bag or a 2.2 lbs (1kg) bag for volume drinkers.
When I opened the bag, I was greeted with a fragrant smell of coffee, with a deep, earthy aroma. There’s also some sweetness too.
My roast is not in beans but in grounds. This means I cannot directly compare the coffee beans with others. However, in appearance, the coffee looks pretty dark, consistent with the fact that it is a dark roast.
How Does Kicking Horse Coffee Grizzly Claw Roast Taste?
To sample Kicking Horse Coffee’s Grizzly Claw Roast, I will brew it in three ways.
The idea is to try the coffee out in three major brewing processes – immersed, filtered, and concentrated.
French Press: This brewing style makes a murky, full-flavored coffee with floating particles. This should allow me to sample the coffee in all its ‘glory.’ I expect full flavor and strong flavor with this coffee.
Pour Over With Filter Paper: This method produces a ‘cleaner’ version of the coffee without too much oil and particles floating about. This should help me to sample more of the subtle notes.
Espresso: CKicking Horse Coffee’s Grizzly Claw Roast is a dark roast, which means trying it as Espresso only makes sense. I look forward to seeing what kind of crema it produces and how intense it is.
French Press
I brewed my French press using the Bodum Caffettiera French press. I retained the same brewing process for my other reviews.
I use 15 grams of coffee and 180ml of hot water at around 185°F (about 85°C). After stirring the coffee ground, I let the coffee brew for 4 minutes before pouring.
My coffee smells earthy and smoky as I brew it. I can see this coffee giving me a strong, intense experience in the palate. As I pour the coffee out, I see it looks dark in color with some slight transparency.
When I take my first sip, it is rather intense. Initially, my palate had a smoky punch of flavor with rich, earthy bitterness.
I can pick up a chocolatey taste as the coffee stays inside my mouth. The richness of the coffee and the chocolatey taste deliver a rather enjoyable experience.
The coffee finishes quite strong, too, leaving an aftertaste of slightly chocolatey notes on my tongue tip after I swallow down the coffee.
Pour Over With Filter Paper
I made my cup of Grizzly Claw Roast, pour-over style with these:
My pour-over brewing steps are taken from Starbucks. I kept a 1:18 ratio to simplify the process and used hot, slightly off-boiling water.
The pour-over version tastes lighter and less intense than the French press brew, but still relatively intense. The color is also slightly lighter, although you can tell this is a dark roast.
When I look at the coffee from the bottom of my transparent glass cup, I can see less coffee sediments, too. This means the filter paper has done its job – removing some coffee oils and finer particles.
This cuts into the smoke and earthiness of the coffee, making it less intense. If you find the French press coffee too strong, this is an option for you to try.
The chocolatey, sweet note appears stronger here and gives me better satisfaction. I think the pour-over version tastes better than the French press version because the coffee becomes lighter here.
Espresso
I first ground the coffee ground of my Grizzly Claw Roast down into a finer consistency. Then, I used my Wacaco Minipresso GR to pull an espresso shot.
From the looks, the resulting Espresso is rich with velvety crema. The color is beautiful, with a darker shade of brown. The aroma is smoky and earthy at the same time. I would say it is not as intense as your regular espresso roast.
As for the flavoring, the Espresso is bold and beautiful, perhaps closest to the label Kicking Horse gave to this roast – a grizzly bear’s claw on your face.
The initial flavor is smoky, and the punch is strong. Following up are the earthy, chocolatey notes.
Try to fight the urge to gulp the Espresso down and let it sit on your tongue for a bit. You may just pick up more of the chocolatey notes. Swallow the coffee down, and then enjoy the long aftertaste.
With Sugar & Sweetener
I prepared two types of sweeteners here. One is natural, and the other is non-sucrose for those looking for healthier options:
- Brown, coarse sugar
- Equal artificial sweetener
I brewed two pour-over cups of Grizzly Claw Roast. I added a stick of brown sugar to the first cup and two drops of Equal to the other.
On the appearance, the sugar added a bit of shine to the coffee. It also made it a bit thicker, with better texture. This is less evident in the Equal cup.
Generally, I wouldn’t say I like dark roasts with sugar, but the sentiment remains with the Grizzly Claw Roast.
The reason is simple. Dark roasts are usually smoky, and when I add sweeteners to the coffee, I sense that the sweetness is trying hard to mask the smoke, which results in a rather off-taste.
With Milk & Creamer
I look forward to this, as I usually enjoy my dark roasts with some fat. I got these ready:
- Fresh UHT cow’s milk
- Coffee Mate creamer, for the lactose intolerant
Again, I brewed two pour-over cups of Grizzly Claw Roast. The first cup gets 30ml or about an ounce of milk, while the second gets a stick of Coffee Mate. That is about two teaspoons.
The milk turns the coffee brownish and gives it a more solid body. The coffee also developed a bit of texture, probably taking in the viscosity of milk.
Taste-wise, the milk takes away some of the earthy and strong flavors of the coffee. It also cuts into the smoke.
One of the best things about dark roasts is that since it is intense, you can add a lot of milk, make it creamy, and retain its flavors well. The same thing happens with the Grizzly Claw Roast here, for sure.
There is also some subtle sweetness, probably from the lactose in the milk.
I think the subtle sweetness also helped to make the coffee nicer. The sweetness is also natural and less overt than, say, if you added sugar.
I will say Coffee-Mate does about the same but does not deliver the rich milky flavors as well as milk. The sweetness is also not as nice as milk, probably because it is made from palm oil.
Kicking Horse Coffee Grizzly Claw Roast vs Lucky Jim Roast
I decided to compare how the Grizzly Claw Roast tastes to the Lucky Jim Roast. Both are from Kicking Horse Coffee.
I brewed both coffee roasts with my French press and then sampled them one after the other.
My personal palate enjoys light and medium roasts. This naturally made me gravitate towards the Lucky Jim Roast over the Grizzly Claw. It is just nicer to sip and does not overwhelm me with too much smoke.
However, as milk coffee, I would say the Grizzly Claw wins. This is because it has the intense flavor to take on milk and not be drowned by it. I cannot say the same with the Lucky Jim roast.
Kicking Horse Coffee Grizzly Claw Roast vs Popular Dark Roasts
Next, I lined up some dark roasts to compare against the Grizzly Claw Roast. They are:
The Grizzly Claw roast is not the best of the bunch, but it is competitive. Flavor-wise, it is only behind the Major Dickason, which remains my favorite dark roast.
A certain amount of sweetness and a combination of flavors work well with the Major Dickason, which Grizzly Claw Roast does not have.
I tried all of these coffees with milk, too, and again, Major Dickason stands out as the best, with the Grizzly Claw coming second. Both coffees have a chocolate-forward note, but the ones in Major Dickason are stronger to me, which means the coffee tastes better with milk.
Kicking Horse Coffee Grizzly Claw Roast vs Regular Coffee
Finally, I picked up a cup of regular Americano from a local 7-Eleven and sipped it side-by-side with the Grizzly Claw Roast.
The idea here is to compare the Grizzly Claw Roast with a regular cup of coffee, especially those $1 cups from gas stations, cafeterias, or convenience stores.
Grizzly Claw wins here, without saying. It is most intense, with better flavor depth and a pleasant finish. It gives me more satisfying sips, too. The difference is even more stark when you add milk in.
The regular coffee tastes bland, with little flavor. The bitterness is flat, without much character. There’s also some watery taste, suggesting underbrewing or a poor water-to-coffee ratio.
Is Kicking Horse Coffee Grizzly Claw Roast For You?
I would say that the Grizzly Claw Roast is created for those who want a stronger punch with the dark roasts but not to the level of regular French, Italian, or Viennese roasts.
Perhaps I may not be wrong to say that the Grizzly Claw Roast is a dark roast made for North American palates.
It is dark and intense but not to the point of smashing the palate to a KO with an uppercut. There are also flavor notes you can enjoy, such as chocolate.
But what I like the most about the Grizzly Claw Roast is how it tastes with milk. If you enjoy milked coffee, such as a Latte, you will love this roast with milk, too. Ready to pick up your bag of Kicking Horse Coffee’s Grizzly Claw Roast? Get one here directly from Amazon.