Levenger Cocoa Bottled Fountain Pen ink with Levenger Circa Planner and Pelikan fountain pen

I have been meaning to try some of the Levenger fountain pen ink for a while, so I finally decided to add some to my most recent Levenger order.  I figured I would go with the Cocoa, which is their version of brown.  I went with this color because I decided it would probably look nice in my Levenger Circa Bomber Jacket planner.

Levenger’s bottled fountain pen ink, still in the box

Just like any other Levenger product, their bottled fountain pen ink comes packaged inside one of their trademark green boxes.  Their boxes kind of remind me of what Tiffany & Co. do with their boxes, I guess being the best of the best in your particular product category earns you the right to pick a unique color box and put all of your products in to stand out from the rest.  As you can see the box is clearly labeled with name and a visual indicator of what the color looks like.  The ink comes in a 50ml bottle, and can be had for about $12.

A quick peek inside the Levenger Cocoa Fountain Pen Ink Bottle

The Levenger fountain pen ink bottle has a unique pear shape to it with a large bulbous bottom that gets more slender towards the top.  The cap of the bottle is a bit wider than the slender neck which makes it easy to get a good grip on it to open up and get to your ink.  Filling a pen from the bottle is pretty easy, however I do wonder if it might be more difficult to use up all of the ink when it gets more empty because you will be left with a wide shallow pool of ink as you work your way through the bottle.

I have been using the ink for a little over a week now, and I really like the way it looks.  One of my concerns was that the ink might require a close look to determine if it was brown or black, but it was really easy to pick up the brown shade immediately with even a quick glance.  I am really happy with the color, and as I suspected it ended up looking really good with the Levenger Bomber Jacket cover.  This is definitely a business appropriate color, and has a professional look that you can use for any purpose.

Levenger Cocoa Fountain Pen Ink Writing Sample.

Levenger Cocoa Fountain Pen Ink Writing Sample

The writing sample for the Levenger Cocoa was of course done on Levenger paper, but as you can tell from the scan, the paper took a little bit of a beating and got some ink splattered on it, so you will have to excuse that as I didn’t want to waste paper and re-write the whole thing.  Usually I’m a little more careful and not so sloppy, but I don’t know what happened here, but it certainly has nothing to do with the quality of the Levenger paper or ink.

I’ve found that the ink writes very nicely, it doesn’t feather and the ink doesn’t seem to spread as it is put onto the paper.  I also do not see any noticeable feathering, and the ink pretty much dries instantly as you can see from the smear test.  I did notice a slight bit of show through on the back of the page I wrote on, but it was not overly bothersome.  In addition to all of these qualities, the ink is also light and water-resistant so you can rely on it sticking around on whatever you are writing for a long time to come.  Also, a quick side note, although I wrote it in the writing sample, I wanted to point out that I’ve been using my Pelikan M215 with a fine nib with this ink, and there has been very minimal nib creep.

This is definitely a great ink for daily use, and it’s surprisingly fun to write with a brown ink.  I think brown gets a bad wrap as a boring color, and I almost didn’t want to buy it because of that, but as with so many other Levenger products, I’m glad that I did.  Grab your own Levenger Bottled Fountain Pen Ink and enjoy!

©2017, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.