Kicking Horse Coffee Review: Is it Kick-Ass Coffee without the BS?
Certified organic and Fairtrade at supermarket prices, with a roast date on the bag — and nothing else disclosed.
Buy it if
- You want organic and Fairtrade without paying specialty prices
- A roast date on the bag matters to you
- You buy coffee where you buy groceries
Skip it if
- You want origin, process or varietal on the label
- You prefer light roasts with acidity
- You buy whole bean only — several blends are ground-only
Kicking Horse is the rarest thing in supermarket coffee: certified organic, certified Fairtrade, and dated. It is also completely silent about where the beans come from or how they were processed. What you are buying is a certification, not a coffee, and at this price that is a reasonable trade.
Kick Ass or Cliff Hanger?
Kicking Horse’s range splits cleanly by brew method, and picking the wrong one is the most common complaint about the brand.
Kicking Horse Coffee, Kick Ass Dark Roast, Ground
Dark, ground, 10 oz. Built for drip and French press, and the blend the brand is known for.Check price
Kicking Horse Cliff Hanger Espresso, Whole Bean
Medium roast, whole bean, developed for pressure. Kick Ass pulls harsh and ashy as espresso; this is what the brand makes for that job.Check price
Where the 8.3 comes from
Five criteria. Kicking Horse wins the things a supermarket shopper checks and loses the things a specialty buyer checks.
Specifications
What you are actually paying for
The certifications are the product. USDA Organic and Fairtrade both require audits and both cost the roaster money, and Kicking Horse carries them across the entire range rather than on one hero blend. For a shopper who wants those guarantees without visiting a specialty roaster, there is very little competition.
What you do not get is any information about the coffee itself. Look at the spec table: process, varietal and harvest are all absent, and origin is given as two continents. That is not unusual at this price — it is what lets a roaster keep the blend consistent while the market moves — but it is the reason this scores 8.3 rather than higher. You are buying a certification and a roast date, and both are worth having.
What we like
- Organic and Fairtrade certified, not merely claimed
- Roast date printed on every bag
- Widely stocked and consistently priced
- 7,439 owner ratings on this blend alone
What to know
- No processing method, varietal or harvest year
- This blend is sold ground, not whole bean
- Dark roast flattens most origin character
- 10 oz bags — smaller than the price suggests
What else to consider
Cliff Hanger Espresso
Medium roast developed for pressure, sold whole bean in 2.2 lb bags.Check price
Kicking Horse Swiss Water Decaf
Swiss Water process rather than solvent, which keeps more of the sugars that build body.Check price
Best espresso beans compared
Where Kicking Horse sits against roasters that do publish process and origin.Bean guide
How we scored it
This review is editorially researched. We worked from the label copy and certification marks on Kicking Horse’s Amazon listings across the range, the owner record for each blend, and price and availability confirmed on 12 August 2026. Three blends we previously linked to are no longer sold and have been replaced. We have not cupped these beans ourselves and do not claim to have; where the roaster discloses nothing, the spec table says so.
Frequently asked questions
Is Kicking Horse coffee actually organic?
Which Kicking Horse blend is best?
Why is there no origin on the bag?
Whole bean or ground?
A certification you can trust, on a coffee you cannot trace
Kicking Horse does the hard, expensive things — organic and Fairtrade audits, a roast date on every bag — and none of the cheap ones, like telling you how the coffee was processed. At supermarket prices that is a fair exchange. Buy Cliff Hanger if you pull shots and Kick Ass if you do not.