Does GMCR Censor Reviews of its Beans

Earlier in the week I posted a review of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Dark Magic Espresso Roast. If you read the review you'll find that I was less than impressed and did not recommend the beans. Essentially the beans do not produce much crema and the taste is unpleasantly bitter. Since the Dark Magic Espresso page at GMCR asks for reviews I posted one there too. Of course I didn't make mention of any competetors on this review, but simply stated my two reservations mentioned above. I said I wouldn't recommend it to friends and I ranked it 2 stars out of 5. I should really have only given it 1 star, but hey, I'm a nice guy after all! I then also submitted my name and email address as a "verified reviewer" and got the confirmation email from their site. However, 4 days later there is still no sign of my less-than-rosy review of the beans. There are still the same 3 glowing reviews there though. Could GMCR be censoring negative reviews of it's beans? Have you had a similar experience?

Update 3/31/2007 - Someone alerted me today to the fact that my review has been published at GMCR since I published this post. So if you post reviews there, it seems they take a while before they get published.

Review of Dark Magic Espresso Blend by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

It is several years since I bought coffee beans from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters based in Vermont so I thought I'd give them a taste test. I actually found it hard to locate their espresso roasts, and searching for "espresso" on the site did not appear to return any results. Eventually I found their Dark Magic Espresso Blend by navigating through to their dark roast blends. The beans cost $6.79 per 10oz bag, and I ordered 4 bags.

The three reviews on the site were all positive although one reviewer stated he or she was using the beans for filter coffee, which is surprisingly a suggestion made on the website by GMCR themselves which struck me as a bit odd.

The beans arrived in a timely manner; I chose 2nd day delivery to ensure they arrived fresh. As expected for a dark roast the beans were dark and oily. In using the beans, however, I have found that the beans do not produce much crema despite winding down the grind finer that I would normally. And the taste is unpleasantly bitter so I am rather disappointed. Perhaps I'll do as suggested and use them for filter or French press ("plunger"). Meantime, my personal favorite continues to be Espresso Vivace Roasteria's "Vita" blend.

See my follow up post Does Green Mountain Coffee Roasters censor negative reviews of their coffee beans?