Russell Beattie Notebook

Folgers Breakfast Blend

Posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2004 11:01 AM

I had my normal morning cup of coffee around 7:30 or so this morning. I'm still shaking from the caffeine three hours later. Wow. For the first time in a while we bought a big-ol-tub of coffee instead of the little $10 bags of Starbucks or Peet's gourmet coffee. You know, the French Roast, or the House Blend? Yeah, usually I try to be snobby. But this time I got sick of running out of coffee so I wanted a big bucket and went for the Folgers instead. This isn't the first time I've bought Folgers, but it's the first time I've purchased their "Breakfast Blend."

Wow. Yeeeee-haw!

That's some seriously caffeinated coffee. Now the funny thing about this is that I felt that lately the coffee we've been drinking has been too strong (in taste). Too "bold" I guess is the nomenclature. So I looked at the different containers with their little graph of taste - and I assumed "strength" - and chose the one with the arrow on the far left. Mild. Yeah, that's what I wanted. Look at the picture above (of the old can, actually, I got the new plastic tub). See the nice shade of light orange and the sun rising over the mountains in the background? Ahh. A nice cup of mild coffee to start my day. When I was making it, I noticed that the coffee itself was lighter in color. Not the fine-grained black stuff from Starbucks, but granular and brown. It smelled nice too.

But what I wasn't expecting was the caffeine content. Oh. My. God. They seriously cranked up the ol' buzz in that tub, I'm telling you. I guess it makes sense, right? Morning is when we all need the boost. But WOW. Not only do I feel like I had three or four cups of coffee (seriously), but what makes it worse is that I wasn't expecting to! Thank god today is when I figured it out and not some day when I'm tired and quickly drink two cups to get me going. I would've had a heart attack.

So the moral of this story is: Don't believe packaging (as if you didn't know that), and, if you're looking for some decent coffee by the tub loaded with caffeine. This is *it*.

:-)

-Russ