Review: Downshift Coffee Sumatra Aceh Dark Roast

(2023) If there is one establishment that has us considering a visit to Belfast, ME, it’s Downshift Coffee. The next coffee roaster to be featured on our site has the added bonus of sharing a location with CG Bikes. A coffee roaster and a bike shop? It’s time to load the team car.

A couple of weeks ago, one of our contributors brought back a bag of Downshift Coffee. Located on the waters of Belfast Harbor, Downshift Coffee is one of the few roasters located within a cycling shop. Sure, sometimes bike shops have a pot of coffee and call themselves a coffee house, but we can’t think of a location that roasts coffee while selling bikes. 

CG Bikes features Giant bikes as well as Niners and All-City. They have a service menu that outlines their repair work as well as situations they avoid. As one would observe at any bike shop, the terrain is reflected in the selection at the LBS. Gravel, fitness, hard tail, and e-bikes dominate the bike selection.

But back to the coffee. Sumatra Aceh is a dark roast featured on rotation at Downshift Coffee. The part that always appeals to us at creakybottombracket.com’s office is any roast with the flavors of chocolate. Sumatra Aceh is described as having flavor notes of chocolate. It was time to test out another rare instance of a roaster selling coffee by the full pound in a compostable bag. 

Having brewed coffee with drip, Chemex, and French press, the chocolate notes were certainly there. This roast felt a bit lighter than some of the other dark roasts in our rotation. This was a welcome trait given high temperatures of middle summer. The cup was smooth and satisfying. We tended to enjoy Sumatra Aceh more via Chemex than the other two options. Regrettably cold brew was not explored, though it was considered.

While we cannot pull stakes and head to the town of Belfast, ME, we can enjoy little bits of it. Downshift Coffee was hand-delivered through friends, but do not despair, Downshift has a website that takes online orders. That still doesn’t solve our deep desire to load up the team car with rugged road bikes and caffeine withdrawal and head to the harbor town of Belfast, ME, and have all our cares solved with one stop. The best part is once the ride concludes, it would be time for another cup of Sumatra Aceh dark roast. Only this time it would be made in house.