Review: Maxwell House - House Blend Coffee Pods
We were excited to see Maxwell House Coffee enter the world of the coffee pod. The Maxwell House coffee pods are designed to be used with the Bunn My Cafe, Senseo, and Home Cafe systems. Most of our excitement came from the Maxwell House Coffee "Taste Lock - Resealable Package". We liked the design of the package, and wondered if it would pack coffee freshness within.
On the flavor front there is a total of 4 flavors currently available in their new coffee pod line: House Blend, House Blend Decaf, French Roast, and Hazelnut. We decided to go with the House Blend Coffee pods from Maxwell house for this review. It is the Maxwell House standard for their coffee, and being made from 100% arabica ground coffee we thought, "How bad or good would this be?".
Each Taste Lock pouch contains 18 pods, that are jammed into this bag (see the picture). We have never been a big fan of the "pouch" of pod due to freshness - so having a nice resealable pouch might give these pods a little edge on freshness. The Maxwell House Coffee pods in the pouch seemed very very dry and just not "fresh". Who would have guessed? There is usually a feeling of coffee bean oil being somewhere in the pouch of pods, nothing here. The pod filter material just didn't have a great texture and feel to it either. We tried brewing a 4oz cup and an 8oz cup with 1 and two pods respectively. The results were what you'd expect.

The coffee produced from the
Maxwell House Coffee pods is coffee every European would fear. It has very little flavor, and is not really watery either, but like strong flavored brown water. We used the Bunn My Cafe to see if we would get any real extraction from this coffee, and as you can see in the pictures to the right - there is no ring of coffee goodness in this coffee. None.
Conclusion
As we've stated before, if you like Maxwell House coffee perhaps you'll like this coffee. We didn't. The coffee produced is like percolated coffee left over from the day before. We are giving the Maxwell House Coffee Pods 1 out of 5 pods. We would have gone lower, but if you pick up a bag of these you could in theory reuse the zip-loc like pouch for other coffee pods in your future.
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Posted by Jay Brewer at June 13, 2005 10:17 AM
I use to drink flogers coffee but had to stop, it upset my stomach, my church had a dinner for women and they served Maxwell coffee, I found myself wanting more, so I bought some, I does not upset my stomach... BUT, do you think you could keep us older folks in mind when you create lids for your coffee, I find it very hard to open the plastic lid, you need to put a tab or something on it, for people who's hands don't want to work properly... thank you Eleanor Peterman
I completely agree with this article.
I got the French Roast of this stuff. A strong mix of Sanka had better stimulation than this poor excuse for coffee.
Add cream and sugar and it's amazing just how much of what remaining coffee flavor there was is just obscured. It's more like drinking watered down cream and sugar. This is very weak stuff.
But, at least the resealable container is worth it. I can use it to seal and store to preserve better coffee pods that I'll buy in the future.