Best American-Made Coffee: US Roasters and Hawaii-Grown Beans

Coffee does not grow in the continental US. Almost every bag sold here holds beans grown in countries such as Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala and Brazil, shipped green and roasted in the US. When a roaster says its coffee is made in the USA, it means the roasting and packing happened here, not the farming. That is still real work: roasting decides much of how a coffee tastes, and the roasters below do it in their own towns.

The exception is Hawaii, the one US state with a commercial coffee crop. Kauai Coffee Company and Kona Joe both farm there, but the coffees we list from them are different things, so read the bag.

This guide names where each brand roasts, which ones say where their beans come from, and which ones do not name a town. Three brands here, Black Rifle Coffee Company, Vermont Coffee Company and BLK & Bold, say they roast in the US but publish less about where, or from which farms, than the specialty roasters do.

Kauai Coffee Company farms a former sugar plantation near Koloa on Kauai's south shore. The land began in the early 1800s as McBryde Sugar Company and was turned over to coffee in 1987. The estate now has more than 4 million coffee trees, and the company says that makes it the largest coffee grower in Hawaii and in the US. It says its coffee is roasted and packaged on the estate. The harvest runs from mid-October to early December, and the wet mill takes in an average of 650,000 pounds of cherries a day in season. We list its Single Origin Dark Roast ground and Single Origin Medium Roast whole bean. Since 2011 the estate has been owned by Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group. Look for "100% Hawaiian Coffee" or "100% Kauai Coffee" on any bag.

Kona Joe Coffee grows trellised 100% Kona coffee on its farm in Kealakekua, on the Big Island. The coffees we list are not those. Kona Joe's own pages say its Gourmet Blend uses specialty coffees from outside the Kona region, its Espresso Blend is built on that blend, and its Decaf Gourmet Blend is also blended from coffees grown outside Kona. The pages do not say which countries the beans come from or where the blends are roasted. For coffee grown on the farm, buy its 100% Kona line.

Stumptown opened its first cafe in 1999 on Southeast Division Street in Portland, Oregon, in a former beauty parlor called Hair Bender, which became the name of its signature blend. It started on a single small vintage Probat roaster and still roasts on Probats. Its wholesale FAQ sets separate order cutoffs for its Portland and New York roasteries, so a bag of Hair Bender, Holler Mountain or Founder's Blend is roasted at one of the two. Stumptown began buying green coffee directly from farms in 2003, starting with Finca El Injerto in Guatemala.

Onyx Coffee Lab was founded in 2012 by Andrea and Jon Allen and roasts and bags its coffee at its headquarters, The 1907, in downtown Rogers, Arkansas, which opened in 2019 with six roasters. Monarch and Geometry are blends of Colombian and Ethiopian coffee, and Southern Weather is another house blend. Onyx publishes what it paid for each coffee and who it bought from, which makes it easy to check where a bag started.

Red Rooster Coffee opened in 2010 in Floyd, Virginia, a town of 432, to roast for the owner's coffee house. It now employs nearly 50 people, roasts in Floyd and packs its coffee in bags it says are manufactured in Virginia. Funky Chicken and Starr Hill Stout come in organic versions, and single origins include the Ethiopia Worka Sakaro.

Paramount Coffee Company was founded in mid-Michigan in 1935 and roasts, blends and packages coffee at 5133 W Grand River Ave in Lansing, Michigan. It has been 100% employee-owned through an ESOP since 2000. It uses 100% Arabica beans, and the Paramount Roasters coffees we list are flavored medium roasts such as Blueberry Muffin, Coffee Cake and Banana Pudding, ground and in pods.

Black Rifle Coffee Company was founded in 2014 by Evan Hafer, a former Green Beret, and is headquartered in Salt Lake City. Its beans come from growing regions such as Guatemala, Brazil and Colombia, and it says it roasts five days a week on Burns cast-iron drum roasters in the USA. Its current pages do not name the roasting city, and its filings list reliance on co-manufacturers. Just Black, Spirit of 76 and Tactisquatch come ground, and Just Black and a variety pack come in K-Cup pods.

BLK & Bold was started in Des Moines, Iowa in 2018 by Pernell Cezar and Rod Johnson. Its FAQ places its operations in Des Moines, where it roasts and packs, and it pledges 5% of gross profits to youth groups. Vermont Coffee Company, started in 2001 and now a Stonewall Kitchen brand, sells organic arabica ground coffee and compostable pods and says the beans are slow-roasted using renewable energy, but does not name the town where they are roasted.

Decide first whether you want US-grown coffee or US-roasted coffee. If it has to be grown here, it has to be Hawaiian, and the label should say 100% Hawaiian or 100% Kona. A bag from a Hawaii company that gives no percentage may contain little or no Hawaiian coffee, as Kona Joe's own blend pages show.

For US-roasted coffee, buy whole bean when you can and grind it just before brewing; ground coffee goes stale faster. Light roasts, like Onyx Geometry or Stumptown Founder's Blend, keep more of the bean's origin flavor and acidity. Medium-dark and dark roasts, like Onyx Monarch or Black Rifle Tactisquatch, taste more of the roast itself and stand up to milk. Flavored coffees, like Paramount's, are a separate style.

For brewing, BUNN has been based in Springfield, Illinois since 1957. Its home brewers keep a tank of water hot so a 10-cup pot brews in a few minutes. BUNN says most of its commercial equipment is assembled in the USA; most of the home brewer listings we read give the United States as country of origin, and the company has described them as US-assembled with some imported parts.

In Rhode Island, coffee often goes into milk instead. Autocrat coffee syrup, sold by Finlays of Lincoln, Rhode Island, is the base of coffee milk, the state drink, though no first-party page says where the syrup is made.