Of all the best and worst items at Aldi that might fill your pantry without emptying your bank balance, the most promising section to shop in by far is the coffee aisle. Finding bags and cans of premium ground coffees mostly priced under $10 means you don't have to sacrifice your taste for barista–level coffee due to grocery budget constraints. The chain makes it easy to keep your java ritual rolling with an array of roasts and flavors that help you make the most of brewing beans into caffeinated broth — or decaf, if that's your thing.

I took a long, careful look at all of the various offerings in the Aldi store label coffee collection and chose an array that sounded like the best bet for bold coffee enjoyment. I'm not known for being picky with my coffee brands, but after years of indulging, I do have a solid sense of what tastes great and what doesn't rate. So I ran through the Aldi coffee aisle, fired up the brewer, and tried each of these grounds one at a time to find out which are premium serves and which are sub-par swigs. Though many of these Aldi-branded picks are better than the originals, there's a definite hierarchy to the quality and enjoyability within the ranks.

I'm not a caffeine hound; I'm a coffee fiend, which means I'm just as happy with decaf as I am with full calf or half calf. Scooping out grounds from a can of Aldi's Beaumont Classic Decaf sounded just as pleasurable of an experience as filling my cup with the full-power brews. This is one of the few selections where Aldi goes old school and uses a metal can, the kind your grandparents are probably used to, though the company goes to zero trouble to spruce it up with retro graphics. For all I know, this could actually be a can my grandparents used, given a second life by an earth-friendly grocery brand.