January 20, 2006

Review: Gloria Jean's Black Gold K-Cups from Single Serve Coffee.com

Review from Single Serve Coffee.com - Coffee Pod Reviews Jim Evans from CoffeeWhiz.com was kind enough to send us a sampling of Gloria Jean's K-Cups to review. Gloria Jean's has 12 coffees including flavored, plus origins and blends in both regular and decaffeinated, as well as a selection of 7 teas that can be used in Keurig B-40 Elite, Keurig B50 Gourmet, Keurig B-60 Special Edition brewers.

We honestly expected to focus our first review on more of their flavored coffees but Gloria Jean's Black Gold K-Cups took us by surprise. Gloria Jean's Black Gold K-Cups are made from a blend of 3 darker roasts coffee (we really wish we knew what all three roasts were) and it comes off as a more medium dark coffee with a very refined finish. This gem of a coffee is nothing short of smoky, interesting, not too dark, and great tasting until the last sip - hot or cold.

What's interesting about this coffee is the smoky start but almost subtle candy like finish. We've been enjoying this brewed from our Keurig B-60 Special Edition brewer. We tried the coffee at the 7.25 oz setting and it's simply perfect. Dialing up the temperature to 192 or down to 190 F didn't seem to make much difference in the taste of the Black Gold.

One interesting note: we've started to replace all of our cream and sugar habits with whole milk and sugar in the raw. We're going to give a full run down of Sugar in the Raw later next week but we can really taste the difference in the sweetness when using it over regular granulated sugar and we also prefer the whole milk over half and half for a darker roast cup of coffee. It's like the two ingredients don't overpower the subtle notes of this smoky wonder.

We're going to give Gloria Jean's Black Gold K-Cups a solid 3.5 out of 5 cups. You'll like the darker roast blend of 3 coffees and you'll come back for the finish. Great stuff.

Gloria Jeans Black Gold