Originally Posted by samftla

Having been a coffee roaster and retail store owner in a previous time, you do have a local roaster that is very good White Rock Coffee http://www.wrcoffee.com/

And there are huge differences in coffees from around the world. Just a brief primer there are two main types of coffee trees, the Robusta and Arabica. While Robusta coffee beans are more robust than the Arabica plants, but produces an inferior tasting beverage with a higher caffeine content. Your store brands such as Folgers and Maxwell House are made from robusta beans. Robusta is much cheaper than Arabica beans. And the caffeine content is about 3 times as high as Arabica.

In general Arabica coffees that are grown at higher elevations tend to be lighter in body and higher acidity...best respresented by the Costa Rican coffees such as Tres Rios. Coffee acidity is typically a highly valued quality especially in Central American and some East African coffee such as Kenyan AA. On the other end of the scale would be the full bodied coffees, which have a heavier mouth feel. A Sumatra Mandheling would be a good example of a full bodied, low acidity coffee. Also the darker the roast the fuller the body will be and hense less acidity and less caffeine.

There are many wonderful coffees out there that cost far less than Kona and Blue Mountain. And by the way, a lot of the coffee that is sold as Jamaican Blue Mountain is NOT. If you are going to pop for the real deal purchase the Wallingford Estate Jamaican Blue Mountain.

Try the Costa Rican Tres Rios or Terrazu, Puerto Rico's Yauco Selecto, Guatemala Antigua, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe or Harrar, Yemen Matari Mocha or the blend Mocha Java which adds Estate Java to the Matari Mocha for a rich cup of coffee.

A good source for additional information is the Specialty Coffee Association of America http://www.scaa.org/index.asp

Hope this will be of some assistance, as you might gather I am a bit of a coffee nut
Sam