Coffee For Less Blog

Which coffee to purchase? Choosing coffee is usually hit or miss. Reading the product reviews sometimes helps but in the end I choose my coffee by the name of the flavor. I bypass the chocolate names and go for more original names.  For example, Pumpkin Spice which is one of my favorites, and I guess Southern Pecan is one too since I’ve ordered it for the last six months. How about Rain Forest Nut? Now that’s a great name and it happens to be my kids’ favorite coffee.  Now if you need a picker up try the Jet Fuel K-Cup!  I wish that I could get some more Coconut K-Cup Coffee, but I haven’t seen that in the listing lately at CoffeeForLess. Did you try the Pecan Pie? Or what about that Vermont Country Blend? Looking for something totally different? I tried the Gingerbread Coffee and that was good!  If you’re in the mood to eat a donut try the Green Mountain Cinnamon Roll or Chocolate Glazed Donut K-Cup coffee, it’s less calories drinking coffee than eating a real donut.

I might even just try a few other strange flavors. Trying different flavors is not all that bad because you have to see what someone writes in the reviews and then decide if you might really enjoy the coffee.  I tend to go for more of the different flavors which are light and medium roasts, but rarely the bold! Usually the bold ones are way too strong and that’s more my husband’s preference He is very much into that Jet Fuel, and although it smells good, it is way too strong for me.

Now that my company ordered a Keurig machine it’s going to be even better to tell them which coffees to order. Right now, they have in my opinion boring flavors such as the Hazelnut, French Vanilla and Hot Cocoa K-Cups. I brought in a few from home and now they want to order the Rain Forest, Vanilla Crème and Cinnamon Roll coffees!

This post was written by our customer and guest blogger Beth S.

Beth lives in Central New Jersey with her husband Gary and two children. Her son Matt is in college, and daughter Alyssa is a junior in High School. Professionally she is a buyer. She makes coffee almost every day upon arriving home from work before heading out to drive her daughter to dance or sports. In her spare time, Beth enjoys camping, bicycling, walking and reading.

I stumble toward the coffee maker, sleepy and not completely functioning.  Yet.

I pour water, knowing that the beans will change me and make me human again.

I have faith that the ingredients will merge into something delicious, something that will nourish me, my body and soul.  Something more than just coffee beans plus water.

And so I wait.  In robe and slippers, I haven’t even begun to put two thoughts together yet.  The coffee comes first.  The brewing aroma awakens my senses to the day’s possibilities.  Even though I had to crawl out of a warm bed, it can’t be all bad…

The mug warms my hands, and I breathe in the steam like an Oracle, waiting for divine inspiration to move through me.  Sometimes it comes, in the form of clarity of thought, optimism, and energy with which to start the day.  Sometimes it comes in a spark of fun, as I sing along to a silly song, shake my tail-feathers, and use the hairbrush for a microphone.  Sometimes it doesn’t come at all, but warm hands and something in the belly are just enough grace for the strength to begin.

Brother Lawrence, a 15^th century Carmelite friar, sensed God’s presence in the ordinary work of his community’s busy kitchen.   How wise:  the task itself isn’t great or small; only our motivation matters.  Making coffee in the morning?  Seems ordinary, but…  I know Spirit is there with me, in the kitchen of my messy little condo.  If I’m really lucky, I pour two cups of coffee and deliver one to the bedside of someone I love.  It is not much, but it is done with great love, and is therefore sacred.

Every morning, every lifetime:  We all stumble, we wait in faith, we are nourished.  When we can go forward toward our potential, we pass on the grace we have received.  All in one cup.  Bring on the day!

This post was written by our customer and guest blogger Beth N.

Beth is a teacher at Seton Catholic Central School in Plattsburgh, NY (way up North near Canada). She spends her free time drinking coffee,  reading, listening to music, traveling, and enjoying her daughter and dog.

The Keurig Coffee maker has revolutionized the way that many of us make coffee. Having a perfect cup of coffee in under a minute after the push of a button is indeed a wondrous thing. On top of efficiency and quality, Keurig offers a mind boggling array of delicious, gourmet coffees packed into the mini miracle known as the K-Cup.

With so many different varieties to choose from I can’t help to but think that it is an arduous task for many to choose a favorite K-Cup. Upon reviewing the options one must decide, breakfast blend or French roast? Columbian or Italian? Flavored or not? I suppose having the “trouble” of choosing the perfect k-cup to start your day is a pleasure within it self, but for me there is no brick wall to hit when indecision strikes.

The coffee that I can always fall back on, always trust to come through with perfect flavor and never let me down is one of character and taste, that in my opinion few other coffees can compare.

Tully’s Kona Blend boasts a slight floral flavor that I have just never found in any other coffee. Although being a medium roast Kona is velvety smooth and relatively mild. Kona is my “go to” coffee as to how it is always enjoyable and very consistent K-cup to K-cup.

Being a bit old fashioned, I do not add cream to my coffee and prefer to drink it black. I feel that this is the only way to truly taste coffee. In my opinion cream dilutes and changes the flavor of the coffee, causing one to miss important nuances of the raw unadulterated black gold that is good coffee.

For those of you transitioning to enjoying coffee in this way, Kona is a wonderful coffee to experiment with as to how it is never bitter even when enjoyed without cream or sweeteners.

If you prefer a coffee with a bit more kick, try using the “half-cup” setting on your Keurig machine instead of the full cup option, this will allow the intensity of the flavor to be a bit more present. I find this works well with Kona and other mild coffees when I am craving a specific coffee but in need of a fuller bodied brew.

All in all, Kona has everything I am looking for in an everyday coffee. Something I can look forward to and never second guess. Kona boasts a mild yet thoroughly enjoyable flavor that is unique with out being to intense. A perfect way to start the day and a great choice the whole day through, Kona will provide you with a consistent and tasty way to add pleasurable moments to the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

This post was written by our customer and guest blogger Nathan D.

Nathan is a musician, graphic/web designer, blogger and social media marketing Technician. He plays in a band called Jabooda based in Southbridge, MA. His passions include God, his wife,  music, art, food, coffee, beer, wine and cigars.

I received my Keurig Special Edition B60 Gourmet Single Serve Coffee Maker as a wedding gift from my parents last year.  When I put it on our registry, my husband being the non-coffee drinker that he is was skeptical of its possible use of counter space to actual use ratio.  I immediately fell in love with the idea of having the perfect cup of coffee every time I pressed the button.  No more stale cups of coffee from the bottom of a pot…no more wasting expensive flavored coffees because I wasn’t as “in the mood” for coffee as I had anticipated…no more playing the how much water should I add game.  Nope- A perfect cup every time.  Instantly, I stopped purchasing coffee from restaurants or coffee shops.  Why on earth would I pay $3+ for coffee when I could pay around 50 cents a cup at home!

I began to sample various flavors of coffee to figure out what my go-to favorites would be.  I wished there would’ve been a “K-cup swap” with a friend, but unfortunately I was my only friend at the time who owned one.  (This has since changed as I have talked 6 of my friends into buying them!).  I started out by buying K-cup variety packs, which helped me narrow down what I didn’t like.  Nothing is worse than having 23 more K-cups of something you don’t enjoy!  I always give them to my mom now that she has a Keurig now J  This sometimes has a negative consequence for me because then I visit her, she only has flavors that I didn’t like enough to keep.

Back to the topic at hand, through many many boxes of coffee, I found that I am absolutely in love with Gloria Jean’s Swiss Chocolate Almond.  I ordered several boxes straight from Gloria Jean’s and enjoyed them for a few months.  When I attempted to reorder, their website didn’t have Swiss Chocolate Almond as a choice and I began to panic!  I did a search online and found that *gasp* Gloria Jean’s had discontinued my favorite flavor!  I frantically searched online hoping to find somewhere that still had them and I found Coffeeforless.com.  I used their live chat and crossed my fingers hoping that they had several left.  Indeed they did and I purchased at least 8 boxes of it.

I would like to say that this was the beginning of my coffee hoarding to save posterity, but alas it was not.  My coffee cabinet began around the holidays when I discovered Green Mountain Coffee’s holiday flavors: Pumpkin Spice and Spicy Eggnog.  I shuddered at the thought of living without these flavors during the rest of the year and stocked up…a lot.  Enough that I am still drinking Pumpkin Spice to this day and occasionally if I’m lucky a Spicy Eggnog pops up into the mix.

I purchased a Keurig K-Cup Machine from a woman on Craigslist for my sister and she included several boxes of coffee.  I of course perused through the flavors searching for ones that I hadn’t tried before.  I found Bellecino’s Blueberry Cobbler.  I loved it…it tasted like I was eating breakfast while having coffee, without the calories of the cobbler!  I immediately went online to search for this amazing coffee and to my dismay I found that it was discontinued a long time ago.  I found a distributor online and bought at least 8 boxes.  Thus my cabinet grows. I currently have an entire drawer of loose K-cups, a carousel, and 2 cabinets full of K-cup boxes.  It would be an understatement to say that I love my Keurig.

This post was written by our customer and guest blogger Stephanie R.

Stephanie is a graduate student who loves coffee, movies, television, music and travel. She is from Chicago and two of her favorite things about Chicago are its architecture and cultures represented within it!