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After reading most of my caffeinated entries on this blog I’m sure you know about my love and obsession with single serve coffee machines. One of my most loved is my Keurig B70. It is simply the best single serve system out there.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the company with the largest selection of KCups and who also owns Keurig as a subsidiary.

When I first started my affair with Keurig, I went through a multitude of sample packs of KCups trying to find the ones I liked best. I realized quickly that many roasters were not created equal. Some burned their roasts to the point where their full city roast was more along the lines of a French roast. And then some made weaker roasts of coffee.

This was where I found myself with Green Mountain Coffee. When I first tried some of their Colombian Fair Trade, I found it to be very week and lacking the flavor I expected from a medium roast. At that point I wrote them off and decided to keep with Diedrich Coffee’s KCups which I felt had the best flavor.

So, fast forward to a couple of months ago when my neighbor had purchased his own Keurig and being the neighborly sort, I gave him some Diedrich KCups and he gave me some of his Green Mountain Colombian.

Now, I wasn’t too thrilled about the exchange, thinking that I would end up tossing the those KCups into the trash, but it had been a while since I last tasted Green Mountain KCups (at least since they had purchased Keurig) and I have learned a variety of techniques to improve the flavor of weaker cups of coffee, so I decided to give them another shot.

That was when the unbelievable happened and I found that Green Mountain’s Colombian Fair Trade was actually very good. I found myself purchasing a large pack of the coffee from BJ’s the next day in order to supplement the other KCups on hand.

Initially, I was concerned when Green Mountain have purchased Keurig and thought that I would be relegated to either drinking KCups I hated or to just use the MyKCup adapter to brew my own blends, but thankfully they’re still licensing to other roasters and still bringing new ones on-board. The fact I also now like some of their KCups is of course also a plus.

I walk away from this with a fresh perspective on Green Mountain, and also with the desire to revisit some of the KCups I wasn’t too happy with in the past. Let’s see what other new “old” roasters I can discover.

A couple of months ago, I asked:

Is Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee really worth it?

At the time, the answer I came up with was that it was not. I was ready to write it off as another coffee which couldn’t live up to the hype. That was when Jerry from Jamaica Blue Mountain Traders dropped me a comment that I may have had a bad batch and that I should really take a look at their coffee.

After agreeing to give their coffee a try, I received a package of their Dauphin Kaffee Peaberry Roast on Demand, and opened it up. The scent of the beans were a welcome surprise. When I had opened the last Jablum bag, they really didn’t have too strong of aroma, these practically screamed for attention. A very good start. But, the true test would come after putting them in the burr grinder and then through my brewer.

Wow, what a difference. This coffee was excellent. It had a mild taste, with a faint sweet and bitter flavor, but the two balanced each other perfectly. There were some citrus overtones, but not enough to overpower the core flavor of the coffee.

In the espresso machine, I found the coffee performed just as well as through the brewer with the difference that it was sweeter. However. this natural sweetness didn’t affect the flavor and instead offset the harsh bitterness you’d normally find in some lesser roasts.

Just to have a control group, I had my sister pick up another bag of Jablum coffee and see how it stacked up once more. There was no comparison. Even with a newer batch, the Jablum coffee didn’t stack up against the Dauphin coffee. Then again, the Dauphin coffee was a peaberry roast so it was going to be higher quality but even putting that aside the difference in taste was night and day.

So, at the end of everything, I can now say that some of the hype for Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is indeed justified, but like with all coffee, it depends on who roasted it and what the quality of the bean is. Sometimes taste can be a subjective thing, so the best thing I can recommend is for you to go and get your own bag and see for yourself.

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you how much I love coffee. The sentence after that they’ll mention how much I love my Keurig brewer. It is the best of the single serve coffee brewers out there. But it does have one problem with it’s Kcups: Once you use them, there’s no way for you to use them again. It’s the ultimate in convenience but not the most environmentally sound think to do.

Now Keurig does have an answer to using your own coffee in their brewers and have a reusable system that minimizes waste: The My Kcup.

The My Kcup is a great system, but it’ll cost you about $15 for a single one. If you want to have some more, the costs can add right up. And to top it off, the My Kcup’s plastics aren’t exactly the best around (drop one on the floor and you’ll see what I mean). So again, where does that leave anyone who doesn’t want to send more plastic to a landfill and would rather drink their own personal blends?

The My-Kap is an interesting middle step on the scale between the a regular Kcup and the My Kcup. Put simply, to use the cap, all you need to do is to rinse out the used coffee or tea out of a regular Kcup after you’ve peeled back the foil top. Then after refilling the used Kcup with new coffee or tea, you insert the My-Kap and the put it back in the brewer. That’s it, you’ve effectively re-used a single use Kcup.

You can get more than 10 uses out of the Kcup (I found it starts to break apart not to long after that), but that’s still pretty good compared to throwing the used Kcup out. Even better is the My-Kap plastics are a lot more durable that the My Kcup, easily handling multiple trips to the floor while I was trying to remove it from a Kcup using the included extraction tool.

Now, the My-Kap does have its shortcomings. The first is that when you’re initially setting it into the used Kcup, it tends to fit very snugly so you’ll be spending some time rocking it into place. The second is that hot liquid will pool around the top of the My-Kap and will spill when you open the brewing chamber. Fortunately this isn’t too much of a problem since the spilled coffee will collect and drain out toward your coffee cup. Either way, these two nitpicks aren’t enough to have me stop using the My-Kap.

Overall, the My-Kap is a great system for people who don’t already have My Kcups to use their own favorite coffees and have less of an environmental impact from using a Keurig brewer.

Today, I finally got around to grinding and brewing some Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee my wife and I had picked up during our honeymoon cruise while we were in Jamaica.

I have to tell you, I’m not really impressed.

Before I go into my impressions, I’ll mention the brand of coffee I picked up. We picked up a bag of JABLUM Coffee after having a really good experience with trying a bottle of their ice coffee.

It was very tasty, and while not the strongest roast I’ve had, it was pleasant. To ensure I have a great cup of coffee, I always buy my coffee as whole bean and grind it with a burr grinder before I brew it.

The JABLUM whole bean coffee I ground up and then brewed was weak, with a very low acidity and without any sort of overtones at all. I was rather shocked to say the least. This couldn’t be the same coffee I’d had before, is it?I ended up tossing the batch after a couple more test cups.

So my question to all of you out in coffee land is: What is the big deal with Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee? I just don’t see it. Now it could be I got a bad batch but for the price I paid, it should have been great. Maybe the brand I picked up is known for producing a low quality roast?

Either way, I have too many questions to try more without some guidance. If you’ve had a great cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and can recommend a roaster, by all means please e-mail me or post in the comments.

When you talk about McCain, do you feel the blood coursing through your veins?  Does hearing Obama’s name make you want to shout out in unconcealed patriotism?  Do you have to have that morning cup of coffee before you can even think about the presidential race?

Well, then you’ll love what the folks at Coffeewiz have cooked up for you.  For all of you coffee lovers who own the miracle of modern coffee known as a Keurig machine, you now have the choice of not only having your morning cup o’ Joe, but also telling everyone waiting in line at the coffee machine exactly who you support in this race:

Yes, candidate Kcups, folks.  Pick your favorite candidate without worries since both have the excellent Coffee People Doughnut Shop Kcups nestled within.  Now, of course there’s no hiding who I’d like to win this particular poll, but don’t let that discourage you. Show your support today and vote with your coffee mug!