KCups: Another Top 5 - Plain Jane Coffee That's Easy to Love!

My favorite coffees are flavored, hands down.  But I've found some unflavored coffee varieties I like, too.  Unsurprisingly, most of them use light or medium roasted coffee beans.  However, the Emeril and Paul Newman coffees both surprised me with how much I enjoyed them, since they're dark roasted.  I doubt I'll ever be able to drink my coffee black like mom, but these were all great with the requisite Splenda and flavored creamers.  So, in no particular order:


1.  Green Mount Coffee Breakfast Blend - This is a light roast, and pairs very nicely with the French Vanilla and Hazelnut creamers I like.

2.  Green Mountain Coffee Nantucket Blend - This is a medium roast, and the taste reminds me of the kind of coffee you'd get at a waffle-house-type restaurant.  Very good.

3.  Green Mountain Coffee Vermont Country Blend - Another medium roast coffee, very pleasant on a chilly morning.

4.  Emeril's Big Easy Bold- A dark roast that I found surprisingly good.  Perfect for mornings when I can't quite seem to wake up.  This coffee is my favorite of the ones featured today.

5.  Newman's Own Organics Special Blend - This is a blend of medium and dark roasted beans.  It's also the only one of the five I've listed today that I can readily buy at the Des Moines grocery stores we sometimes shop at on the way home from work.  The flavor is deep and bold, but never bitter. 

I love coffee, I love tea.
I love the java jive and it loves me.
Coffee and tea and the java and me,                     
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!

Juli's Top Five Favorite K-cups, and How to Store Them

I got a single serve Keurig coffee maker for Christmas, and it's probably been the most used and appreciated kitchen gift I've ever received!  Jeffrey makes me a quick cup of coffee in the morning while I'm getting ready, which I transfer to a travel mug on my way out the door.  We don't have to worry about the pot being left on, and there is almost zero cleanup.  There are over 200 total varieties of K-cups on the market, which include coffee, cocoa, tea, and cider.  I've tried lots of varieties, and I thought I would highlight my current favorites.

  

Let me first tell you that my preference is for a light roast, and that I love flavored coffee.  So- if a midnight black cup-o-joe-no sugar-no creamer is your thing, you probably won't feel the same fondness I do for my picks.  I should also note that I add CoffeeMate's French Vanilla or Hazelnut liquid creamer to each cup I drink. 

I have linked my coffee picks to some of my favorite online vendors, but I want to let you know that I'm not receiving any compensation for doing that.  These are just the least expensive places I've found to order my coffee, and for me the online service is great, since most stores in my area don't stock a big selection of the K-cups.

First up is Wolfgang Puck's Hawaiian Hazelnut, which is easily the best Hazelnut coffee I've tasted so far.  Other varieties I've tried have included Gloria Jean's Hazelnut and Millstone's Hazelnut Cream.  The Hawaiian Hazelnut, charmingly subtitled Aloha Noisette for French speaking coffee drinkers, is smooth with a strong hazelnut flavor.  It's a great start to a hectic day.

  

The next really superior coffee flavor on my top five list is Green Mountain Coffee's Wild Mountain Blueberry.  The blueberry flavor is pronounced, but not overpowering, and not artificial-tasting in any way.  This coffee also has an undercurrent of cinnamon which is  decadently rich!

I also like Green Mountain Coffee's Southern Pecan.  This is a great everyday cup of coffee.

When we have Indian food, I like Cafe Escapes Chai Latte.  It's very, very sweet, but it comes closest to replicating the chai made at my favorite Indian restaurant in Des Moines, India Star.

My favorite cocoa is Cafe Escape's Milk Chocolate Hot Cocoa.  It doesn't compare to making cocoa at home using Droste's Cocoa, but for a quick cocoa fix when you don't want to stand at the stove warming milk, it's excellent.  I can find the Cafe Escapes brands sporadically at Des Moines area groceries for a lot less than it's sold for online.  But if you need to get it online, I recommend Bed Bath and Beyond, Amazon, or Office Depot.  Shop around to get the best price you can.

Bonus pick:  My biggest regret is that I often crave a hot cup in the evening, and coffee (or even cocoa) would keep me awake all night.  I can resolve that craving and still get my sleep when I brew up a mug of Green Mountain's Hot Apple Cider.

Second part of the story:  If you have a coffee maker that uses the Keurig-cups, how do you store the darn things?  If I make an online order, I want to get free shipping, and that usually means making a largish order.  I like variety, so in the beginning I usually had 7 open boxes of various flavors, and the storage space required was pretty significant. 

I looked around online and found a few people who'd posted how they store their coffee.  The method most appealing to me involved a Sterilite plastic drawer system, and I was excited to find the one that had been featured in the blog post at my local Walmart.  However, the guy who'd done this using Sterilite's mini 5-drawer system must have had the patience of Job!  I could get 9 K-cups in each drawer- barely.  I had to wiggle, jiggle, and pull to get the drawers to open and close.  There just wasn't enough clearance.  Also- most K-cups come 24 to a box.  So one flavor would fill up about half of each container. 

I searched for a larger container that wouldn't be too unwieldy on our pantry shelves.  I found the Sterilite 3-drawer organizer (Item number 1791).  Measurements for the product are 13 1/2 x 11 x 9 5/8 inches (34.3 by 27.9 x 24.4 cm).  Each drawer is big enough to hold  8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper.  I can get 24 cups in each drawer, and the drawer height gives enough clearance so that each drawer opens easily.  I currently have 3 of these, so I can store over 200 K-cups at any given time.  I also have to admit I love seeing the labels I made for each drawer.  So orderly.  Unlike most of the rest of my life!



I hope that manufacturers keep coming out with new and interesting flavors of K-cups.  I was afraid I might be buying into a gimmick, but it seems like more and more stores are carrying the coffee, so I think at least I'm in on the beginning of the trend.

   

Please leave me a comment with your favorite flavors, or if you have a storage method you'd like to share.  No Big Whoop.  Just Coffee Talk!  (channelling Linda Richman, aka Mike Myers, vintage Saturday Night Live).



Reading comments makes me all verklempt!  But in a good way! 

Percolator Coffee- Need Some Advice!

Recently I was at an estate sale in Fort Dodge.  It was the last day of the sale, and everything was half price.  I spotted a Corningware Cornflower 6-cup coffee percolator in almost new condition, so I bought it - for $2.50!

Today was my first experiment in percolator coffee, and I'm maybe doing something wrong, because the coffee was VERY bitter.  Maybe I'm adding too much coffee?  I used 5 heaping spoons of coffee for 5 cups of coffee, which was what the innernets had advised me to do.  Then I plugged in the pot, and was a little worried that the indicator light wasn't working.  Later I realized that the light  turns on when the coffee is DONE, not when you start the pot perking!

If you know how these vintage percolators work, please send some advice my way.  Thanks!