Licensing incongruent products is hard. We’ve all seen poor attempts at Big Screen Movie + Pancake House, or French Fries and that other Big Movie Franchise. Getting the proper fit for tie-ins is art and science.
Dungeons and Dragons attempted bologna in the 80s and these days the lifestyle brand has a $70 two-slice toaster. Those don’t work. Their t-shirts have been great — I strongly recommend the Harper Motto shirt.
Merging coffee and a brand is also difficult. I’ve been part of this with a major morning show and a coffee brand in the past, that was a fairly natural fit. Gamers of all types and caffeine tends to be a good fit too. Mt Dew and various energy drinks have partnered with numerous video games over the decades.
D&D’s official coffee does a couple things really well. There’s also a major miss.
The art and branding continuity is perfect. This coffee looks to be a perfect extension of official Dungeons & Dragons and presented by Wizards of the Coast. Easy access to the art is a big reason for that.
But there are plenty of these kinds of partnerships that get the art and branding wrong, despite the easy legal and marketing access.
The bag’s language is very 5e D&D in writing style. The ampersand is all over the sidewalls of the bag. That central art piece is tremendous — matching the aesthetic of modern D&D.
When I was a full-time apprentice coffee taster we focused on four major elements to coffee flavor — body, acidity, flavor and finish. Despite not working in that field for a decade now, that’s still how I approach flavor, including when selling beer or tasting wine for pleasure.
This is where Dragonfire fails.
Per the bag it is a medium roast, preground “for any filter” which basically means for various drip techniques/filters and wholly Brazilian beans. The label did not call out 100% Arabica (the website does), but there are no tell-tale signs of robusta or other varieties. It also says that it is “medium flavor.”
I did not perform a cupping, as the coffee was pre-ground.
I tasted multiple Chemex pourovers using a metal filter over the past week — my current traditional coffee preference. I also attempted to use it in an espresso machine, but was unable to tamp sufficiently enough to make up for the different grind size.
Body: fairly low body for a Brazil
Acidity: essentially neutral
Flavor: no spikes of premium flavors such as nutty, vanilla, etc
Finish: very clean, no roughness which can be common in lower grown Brazils (this is where robustas would have been obvious)
For a coffee fan Dragonfire would not be a coffee I would suggest. As a gift to a non-flavor nerd who likes D&D and drinks coffee with sugar and/or cream it’s a decent choice.
For the flavor nerd who likes D&D I prefer Found Familiar coffees. I have a bag of Fey Magic waiting for a cupping, espresso tasting and pourover just as soon as I’m through my Middle Fork roaster and right before switching back to Campfire’s Summer Camp.
