6 Frequent Customer Complaints About Costco's Kirkland Signature Coffee

We love going to Costco for pantry staples, frozen meals, and fan-favorite drinks. It's also a great place to stock up on all of the essentials you use on a daily basis. Some of those essentials, like coffee, can be quite pricey, which means that it might make sense to opt for the Kirkland Signature version of the product. You can often find items from this brand for a better price than name-brand equivalents. But when it comes to coffee, choosing Kirkland Signature might not always be the best move ... not if you want your coffee to actually taste good, that is. According to a lot of Costco shoppers out there, Kirkland Signature's coffee tends not to be very pleasant, with posters taking to Reddit and other corners of the internet to complain about it.

We've dug into some of the most common complaints, pinpointing just why so many shoppers find Kirkland Signature's coffee line so unimpressive. Whether you're here to seek out solidarity after buying an especially bad bag of beans or you're trying to figure out whether snagging some Kirkland Signature coffee makes sense the next time you shop at Costco, these complaints can give you a little more insight into Costco's coffee landscape.

Even though coffee beans may look dry, they're actually somewhat oily. If you look carefully at a cup of black coffee, for instance, you may notice that the top of it has a slick sheen to it. However, coffee shouldn't be too oily — if it is, it usually indicates that the coffee isn't very high-quality. Therefore, it's more than reasonable for customers to get upset when they buy coffee that ends up tasting really oily once it's in their mug. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case with lots of Kirkland Signature's coffee.

This is a common complaint we found popping up on the internet, with shoppers adding it to the long list of things they didn't like about the brand's coffee. A Reddit user said that the Kirkland Signature espresso they'd gotten from Costco was so oily that it actually left oil on their hands after touching it. They questioned why it was even so intensely oily in the first place. Partially because of that oily quality, another Redditor said that it was a "hard pass" for them. Some posts even suggest that the beans have become oilier over time. If you're looking for a good cup of coffee without that oiliness, you may want to pass on what Kirkland Signature has to offer.

Everyone has different preferences when it comes to their ideal coffee roast. Some coffee drinkers prefer a lighter roast, which offers a brighter flavor and more acidity. Others like the deeper, richer flavors of a dark roast. And still others fall somewhere in the middle, seeking out medium roasts. That's all great. But sometimes, a coffee really can be roasted too dark, and according to many Costco customers, that seems to be the case with a lot of Kirkland Signature's coffee. It's a complaint we saw coming up again and again on Reddit.

When one user detailed a long list of complaints about how bad Kirkland Signature's coffee was, they included how dark it was. A commenter replied that the beans may be over-roasted to ensure that beans from different sources all tasted more similar. Another poster made a similar complaint about the espresso from Costco, and commenters on the post agreed that this darkness did, indeed, make the coffee taste bad. One found Kirkland Signature's House Blend to be so dark, they wondered if they accidentally got a batch that had been over-roasted. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case even with lighter roasts.

Once you've picked out the best espresso machine for beginner coffee enthusiasts, you can start grinding up your beans and making an excellent cup of coffee. But you might want to think twice before snagging yourself a bag of Kirkland Signature's espresso, since it might not be as easy to make as you'd expect it to be. At least, that's what many Costco customers complain about when they try to put these beans through their espresso maker.

A Costco shopper took to Reddit to complain about the store brand's Espresso Blend, saying that, despite their best efforts, they could not pull a shot from these beans. They weren't sure why they were having so many problems, since they'd done extensive troubleshooting. A commenter explained why the original poster may have been experiencing this issue, claiming that these beans had to be ground way finer than other types out there. Another Costco shopper had a similar problem and had to ask around on Facebook to find out the best settings to use when working with these beans. If you're looking for the easiest possible beans to use, Kirkland Signature's Espresso Blend may not be your first choice.

Yes, it's great when you get particularly good coffee beans, and you can taste a wide range of nuanced flavors in every sip. But even when you're not going for a particularly good bag, you still want your coffee to taste fresh at the very least. When you consider just how expensive coffee can be these days, that freshness seems even more important. Unfortunately, though, plenty of Costco shoppers out there have found that Kirkland Signature's coffee is frequently stale. Who wants to buy coffee that may not even taste good right after it's been opened?

And no, we're not just talking about the pre-ground stuff. One Redditor said that the whole bean coffee they get from Costco is frequently stale. On another thread, a different Redditor shared a similar sentiment, saying that they were surprised at how much they didn't enjoy this coffee. Still another pointed to Kirkland Signature's Ethiopian blend, complaining that it was stale but also saying that was typical for any Costco coffee that isn't over-roasted. Someone even wrote a whole post on their blog about why Costco's coffee — including the Kirkland Signature brand — tends to be so stale. When you want a fresh cup, there may be better options to seek out.

Some people — especially those who tend to like lighter roasts — actually enjoy a certain level of acidity in their coffee. Others, on the other hand, prefer less of that bracing acidity, and even those who do like some extra zing in their cup still don't want their coffee to taste so acidic that it feels unbalanced. But with all the complaints about Kirkland Signature's coffee we've already outlined, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the brand's coffee can often be too acidic, at least in the minds (and mouths) of several Costco-shopping Redditors.

One poster was extremely clear about the drawbacks of this bold acidity, writing that the coffee tasted "like a strong acid is dissolving [their] esophagus." That's not exactly a selling point for us. Another said something similar about a lighter Kirkland Signature roast from Kenya, admitting that they'd found another way to prepare the coffee that made that intense acidity less unpleasant. A Redditor even asked the r/Costco community about the least acidic coffee beans they could get at Costco, saying that the Kirkland Signature French Roast was too acidic for them. And yet another echoed the same idea about the French Roast specifically. For the not-too-acidic coffee-loving crew, Kirkland Signature's coffees don't really seem to deliver.

Yes, technically, coffee is supposed to be somewhat bitter. In fact, for a lot of coffee drinkers out there, that bitterness is all a part of the appeal of the beverage. However, there's a certain level of bitterness that makes coffee taste actively bad, and that's what a lot of Costco shoppers seem to have experienced with the store brand's coffee. It also seems to hold true across different varieties. For example, both the House Blend and the Ethiopian variety have been called out for being too bitter by Redditors. The same is true for the Christmas blend you'll sometimes find at Costco during the holiday season.

A commenter wrote that the Ethiopian blend coffee they'd found from Kirkland Signature was not only too bitter but also tasted "cardboard-y." That's definitely not what most coffee drinkers are looking for in their cups. According to experts, you can reduce bitterness in your coffee by adjusting the grind size, but that still might not make up for beans that just don't taste very good in the first place.