Review: Fair Trade The Perfect Peach K-Cups for Keurig

There's something truly amazing about a coffee that has a peachy flavor, and a warm coffee finish. Sure we were skeptical at first when we thought about drinking the Fair Trade The Perfect Peach K-Cups coffee from Green Mountain, but after our second and third cup the skepticism turned into delight. This is a very interesting, and complex flavored coffee, and refreshing in both hot and iced coffee formats.

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Review: Green Mountain Fair Trade Golden French Toast K-Cups for Keurig

This past Winter yielded the seasonal Fair Trade Golden French Toast K-Cup from Green Mountain and after several hectic weeks around the single serve coffee office, we finally got a chance to give this flavor a try. Green Mountain describes this K-Cup as having the flavors of “warm, buttered French Toast drizzled with sweet maple syrup”. After reading that, we couldn’t wait any longer to do a review.

We chose the 5.25oz brew size to extract the full flavors and were greeted with the pleasant scents of maple with an added hint of cinnamon lying underneath. First impressions when tasting this coffee are surprisingly enough quite the opposite of its scent… you taste the cinnamon first, then you taste the maple afterwards. The flavoring is right up there with the real thing and we’re sure this K-Cup would be great paired with it.

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Review: Timothy’s Sugar Bush Maple K-Cups

With the introduction of Spring comes a tradition in the North-Eastern corners of the country known as visits to local maple sugar camps where one can enjoy all sorts of treats. We’ve seen everything from maple peanut brittle to maple caramel popcorn, but until recently we had yet to see any maple flavored coffees. Thankfully, Timothy’s noticed this as well and have been introducing their Sugar Bush Maple K-Cups each year as a result. We love anything maple around the Single Serve Coffee test kitchen and couldn’t wait to give this coffee a try since the maple scent was permeating through the unopened box.

We chose the 5.25oz brew size to extract the full flavors and were pleased to see the maple aroma fill the room (fond memories of the maple camp came flooding back). We were expecting a very sweet maple taste and were surprised by the initial bite of the acidity then somewhat disappointed to find that the maple flavoring was not as strong as we had hoped. We tore into another box only to find the same thing. Always willing to try anything with our coffees, we found a quick fix to this dilemma by adding a half-ounce shot of pure maple syrup to the bottom of the glass before brewing our next cup and were immediately pleased with the results.

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Review: Southern Pecan K-Cups from Green Mountain Coffee

With the sheer multitude of K-Cup varieties on the market today, it’s almost impossible for us to review every single one (despite our best efforts), so we decided to follow-up our recent GMCR Wild Mountain Blueberry review with another one of Green Mountain’s classic flavored K-Cups... Southern Pecan.

We chose the 5.25oz brew size to extract the full flavors and it didn’t take long for the room to fill up with a strong scent of sweet buttered praline pecans. We could almost taste the real thing just by inhaling the scent, amazing. This was by far one of the best scented coffees we’d tried in a while and it had us wishing that Glade would make this scent as one of their scented candles or plug-ins. Hmm… maybe that’s a market GMCR could explore?

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Review: Green Mountain Fair Trade Wild Mountain Blueberry K-Cups

We decided to give some of our old favorites another try as we wait for newer seasonal varieties to arrive, so our first pick was Green Mountain’s Fair Trade Wild Blueberry K-Cups. A quick look on Green Mountain’s website reveals that the company got its start in 1981 when they opened a small café in Waitsfield, Vermont and roasted their coffee on-site. Some of their first commercial clients were restaurants & inns within the area, but shortly thereafter, skiers from neighboring states started asking the café if they could have its coffee shipped to their homes. This growing demand would eventually give birth to the company’s first mail-order business. As of 1993, the company has been publicly traded on NASDAQ and has quickly established itself as one of the nation’s leading specialty coffee companies not to mention the pioneering force partnering behind the introduction of the Keurig single serve coffee system. Today the company also sells many other coffee & tea brands including Newman’s Own, Caribou and Celestial Seasonings.

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Review: Emeril's Organic French Quarter Roast K-Cups

Distributed by Timothy's World Coffees, Emeril's Organic French Quarter Roast is one of the company's latest offerings in the K-Cup market. As noted in a recent review, Emeril is known mostly for his cooking shows on the Food Network and various food products available at most grocery stores. The coffee scene is a relatively new one for him, but he's quickly gaining recognition amongst Keurig users across the nation.

As usual, we decided to choose the 5.25oz brew size to extract the full flavors of this dark roast using our Keurig brewer. The scent reveals hints of hickory and chocolate while its appearance (when held up to a light source) reveals a surprisingly clear, crimson red tint. This is almost ironic as the French Vanilla BAM! K-Cups we reviewed earlier were a medium roast yet had a much darker color. Maybe this color difference has something to do with this coffee's organic nature? Speaking of which, sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between organic and non-organic products… certain organic baked goods yield obvious differences in taste while organic fruits & vegetable often times taste identical to their non-organic brethren.

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Review: Emeril's Vanilla Bean BAM! K-Cups for Keurig

Distributed by Timothy's World Coffees, Emeril's Vanilla Bean BAM! is one of 2 new Emeril's K-Cup flavors recently introduced to the single serve coffee market (we'll be reviewing Emeril's Organic French Quarter Roast in the coming weeks). Known mostly for his cooking shows on the Food Network and various food products available at most grocery stores, the coffee scene is a relatively new one for Emeril and his goal was to introduce a coffee which stood out among the rest as having a richer, heartier taste & character. This new vanilla flavor marks the first time he's gone with a medium roast vs. his usually darker varieties.

We chose the 5.25oz brew size on our Keurig one cup coffee maker to extract the full flavors, and were greeted with a strong French vanilla scent which seemed stronger than any other vanilla K-Cup we'd tried before. As a result, we were expecting a stronger vanilla flavor from this smaller brew size but were surprised at how subdued & mild it was. The sweet taste of vanilla was present but was struggling to balance the sour nature of the acidity. We thought there would have been more "BAM!" (so to speak) in the flavoring overall and it left us wanting to throw in a few dashes of vanilla extract. We understand some people will likely prefer less flavorings in their coffee, but when a product is marketed as "having enough BAM! for Emeril himself", the final result is rather disappointing.

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Review: Timothy's Perfectly Pumpkin K-Cups for Keurig

S.H. continues his quest to find the perfect K Cup. Will he enjoy the pumpkin spice K Cups from Timothy's World Coffee?

With the opening of their first store in 1975, Timothy's World Coffee set out to become one of Canada's premier coffee houses. The company operates over 100 coffee/bakery restaurants across Canada under 3 distinct brands: Timothy's World Coffee, Mmmarvellous Mmmuffins & Michel's Baguette. In addition, the company operates a 35000 sq. ft. coffee roasting facility in the Toronto region and a bakery commissary; these guarantee the superior quality and freshness of all the coffee and bakery products served both in their retail stores and by co-branded partners.

Timothy's source pure origin coffee from countries around the world that grow specialty grade Arabica beans and only the top 5% of any harvest will meet their strict standards for quality. Over the years, the company has developed over 35 blends, various flavored coffees, teas and decaffeinated coffees. To ensure freshness, all coffee beans are brewed or sold in their retail locations within 20 days of roasting. They also service & supply offices, hotels, theatres and hospitals.

With Halloween just around the corner, I decided to review Timothy's Perfectly Pumpkin limited-edition K-Cups. These K-Cups will only be available during the Fall season, so now's the time to grab some if you want to try them out. When brewing, familiar scents of pumpkin pie start to emerge… all-spice, nutmeg & hints of pumpkin are all present. The body is medium with a usual brown/amber color.

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Review: Van Houtte Apple Crumble K-Cups for Keurig

Our K Cup correspondent S.H. of the wild white north has managed to get his hands on Van Houtte's Apple Crumble K Cups. Does he enjoy them? Do they have the taste of apple with all the crumble?

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Van Houtte have been pioneers in European-style coffee since 1919. Today, they're involved in almost every aspect of the coffee industry. They select and buy their own beans, roast and package their coffees, manufacture state-of-the-art single cup vending machines and market a wide range of unique products to retail, office, café and online customers. They even operate the largest coffee services network in North America serving more than 71000 workplaces in most major cities.

When brewing these Apple Crumble K-Cups, you're greeted with the warm aroma of cinnamon & apples plus very subtle undertones of dark chocolate. The body is medium, with a somewhat dark color usually seen in most flavored coffees but if held in front of a light source, hints of crimson red shine through. At first I thought this was the natural color but later learned some K-Cup manufacturers color their coffees to match the flavors (something I hadn't been used to with Tassimo T-Discs).

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Review: Wicked Winter Blend Extra Bold K Cups for Keurig

We've been sampling the Wicked Winter Blend Extra Bold K Cups for Keurig over the past week. These K Cups are not only extra bold - but extra sweet in flavor and profile. The Wicked Winter Blend Extra Bold K Cup brings together Indonesian coffee with Central and South American beans. The result is a toasty, very caramelly cup with a chocolate body, and an explosion of nutty sweetness in the finish.

What we like? This is Green Mountain's first-ever seasonal coffee offered as an Extra Bold, with 20% more coffee in every K-Cup, and it' Fair Trade too. And you can really taste the difference in each cup.

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Review: Hazelnut Dark Roast Extra Bold K Cups from Green Mountain

We're not the biggest flavored coffee drinkers here at Single Serve Coffee, but every once in awhile a flavored coffee comes into our lives and can change our coffee drinking habits. Hazelnut Dark Roast Extra Bold is just such a flavored K Cup coffee.

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Review: Coffee People Donut Shop Coffee K Cups for Keurig

We can remember our first cup of Donut Shop coffee at the Northeastern Hotel and Diner in Northern Maine. It was nutty, sweet, and had a bit of a raspy feel to it in the throat. We'll also never forget how wired we felt after consuming nearly 5 cups. Coffee People makes great coffees (we really like their Black Tiger Bold), and most of them are on the extra-bold side. We were surprised to hear about the Donut Shop Coffee K Cups coming from Coffee People, because we think of Donut Shop coffee as a bit on the milder side, and very rich with Arabica infused taste.

How does Coffee People tackle this cup of classic american coffee? Is it mild? Or is it bold? How does it stack up against the other Coffee People K Cups out there?

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Review: Green Mountain Fair Trade Pumpkin Spice K Cups for Keurig

Halloween and the holidays are upon us, and that means spicy flavor filled Fall autumnal coffees. This time of year, we long for apple cider, Fall leaves, and most of all Fall pies. We're always excited to get our first pumpkin pie, or any type of pumpkin cookie, donut (yes donut), and most of all the pumpkin spiced coffee that comes out each Fall from Green Mountain and other coffee roasters. Green Mountain Coffee produces seasonal K Cup blends, and Pumpkin Spice is always in our Keurig this time of year.

The Green Mountain Pumpkin Spice is also Fair Trade certified, meaning you'll be doing your part to keep coffee growers in business wherever Green Mountain sources the coffees for this blend. The Fair Trade Pumpkin Spice K Cups will work in your Keurig Elite B40 Brewer, Keurig B50, Keurig Special Edition Ultra Elite B60, and the Keurig B70 Brewer. How good is this Autumnal coffee we've come to drink each year?

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Review: Fair Trade Autumn Harvest Blend K Cups for Keurig

Looking for something to take the chill off in the cooler Fall weather? Green Mountain Coffee produces seasonal K Cup blends, and Autumn Harvest is one of our favorites. Autumn Harvest blend is also Fair Trade certified, meaning you'll be doing your part to keep coffee growers in business wherever Green Mountain sources the coffees for this blend. The Fair Trade Autumn Harvest Blend K Cups will work in your Keurig Elite B40 Brewer, Keurig B50, Keurig Special Edition Ultra Elite B60, and the Keurig B70 Brewer. Now of course we say it's one of our favorite seasonal K Cups - but how much of a favorite is it?

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