Consumer Report Says Even the Best Coffee Blends are Only Good
Recently Consumer Report rated 37 blended coffees, some of which had caffeine and some of which were decaffeinated. Though the highest ratings were “very good” and “excellent” not one of the coffees they tried scored better than “good”. This was their finding with both the caffeinated and decaffeinated blends tasted. It leaves one to wonder if any of the Consumer Report tasters actually liked coffee. Perhaps it was the opposite and they were all such coffee connoisseurs that no coffee was good enough. Whatever the case, not a single brand tasted seemed to be worthy of the highest marks.
In case you don’t understand what a coffee blend is, the explanation is really very simple. It’s when the coffee producer mixes together coffee beans from two different regions or countries. This can give the coffee more depth of flavor when the beans selected are of equal quality. It can also be a way of adding a few higher quality beans to improve the flavor of cheaper beans. At least that’s the theory, but it takes an awful lot of good beans to make the lesser beans taste good. Most of the time, the flavor of the better beans is just lost in the blend and wasted.
Fourteen of the caffeinated brands received a “good” rating, as did fourteen of the decaffeinated blends. The top two in the caffeinated category were Starbucks House Blend and Green Mountain Signature Nantucket Blend Medium Roast. While the testers said that both coffees had a woody, earthy taste, they felt that the flavor of the Starbucks was fairly bitter to very bitter. That isn’t really news to those of us who’ve tried the coffee in their stores. The flavor of the Green Mountain was considered green and sharp, probably because it’s a lighter roast than Starbucks.
So what does Consumer’s Report recommend for the average coffee drinker? They suggest that we try to get the best taste we can for the right price. They also suggested that we not depend on brand names or high prices to guarantee that we’re getting good tasting coffee. Also, the price of the package of coffee doesn’t necessarily reflect its actual cost. To know its actual value, you need to figure out what the actual price per cup of your coffee is based on the amount you use per cup.
brewed on Feb 11th, 2010
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