The Good: Appropriately caffeinated, Good aroma, Tastes great, Reasonably priced!
The Bad: More expensive than other Folgers blends!
The Basics: Folgers Black Silk Coffee is a great dark coffee for those who want a bold morning wake-up beverage!
Easily the most-used kitchen appliance in my new house with my wife is our coffee maker (reviewed here!). It seems that it’s become much, much harder to get her out of bed without a good cup of coffee in the morning and so we brew our own because that is the most affordable way for coffee drinkers to live!
Almost the moment we moved into our new place, we purchased a 27.8 oz. plastic container of Folgers Black Silk coffee and it has lasted us over a month and a half. As I sit down to our last cup (for now!), I figured it was an excellent time to review it!
Basics
One of the dominant coffee roasters and distributors in the United States, Folgers produces a number of blends. Black Silk is the darkest blend by Folgers that I have found in stores and for the 1 pound, eleven point eight ounce plastic container, I have more often than not found it at about $3 more per canister than the same size, lighter blends. Black Silk is dark, rich, and flavorful, but Folgers will make you pay for that! This is a 27.8 oz. plastic canister of ground coffee. Because it is not whole bean, no grinding is required. With a plastic lid that one simply lifts off, the Black Silk Coffee is easily protected from absorbing scents of other foods. The container has a nice grip to the side of it, to make the otherwise bulky container easy to handle.
Black Silk Coffee is an aromatic blend that smells potently of coffee beans and it is a caffeinated blend.
Ease Of Preparation
Black Silk Coffee is remarkably easy to prepare, no advanced culinary degrees necessary! First, open the can. Folgers Black Silk Coffee is vacuum sealed when first purchased, but it has only a foil seal to get through to break the vacuum seal. After removing the foil seal, procure a scoop (not included) and measure out one heaping tablespoon for every two cups of water in your coffee maker. Black Silk Coffee is intended for automatic (drip or percolating) coffee makers. This is NOT an instant coffee. As a result, it needs to be brewed.
Consult your coffee maker's instructions for how to brew the coffee. However, as far as the basics go, you'll need a coffee filter, like the Melita coffee filters (reviewed here), which you put the Black Silk Coffee in and then brew through your coffee maker. The directions recommend making a pot at a time and refrigerating the beans to prevent them from absorbing other flavors and aromas.
Taste
Folgers Black Silk Coffee has a rich, deep coffee scent to it. It effervesces well into a room and anyone who likes coffee will enjoy the scent of the aroma. This coffee might be the mass-market coffee that smells most like fresh ground coffee beans to me when it is brewed, the scent is that vivid and enticing to those who love coffee!
Black Silk Coffee is strong and forceful, without being unpleasantly bitter. Instead, this coffee is dry and rich, without making one’s lips pucker back; the word “bitter” does not describe it. Instead, this is the coffee that is most analogous to what happens with chocolate in the 90 – 95% Cacao range; the flavor does not become unpleasant and bitter, it merely tastes like one has more of the dark chocolate in one’s mouth than they do. So, too, does the Black Silk coffee make one feel like they have a greater volume or concentration of black coffee in their mouth than they would with the average dark roast blend.
With sugar, Black Silk Coffee becomes only minimally sweeter; this coffee is a force of nature that completely sublimates the sweetener to its dark flavors. Creamers take about twice as much (2 – 4 Tbs. as opposed to 1 – 2 Tbs.) to flavor the Black Silk; this is a beverage for people who love the taste of coffee!
Nutrition
This is coffee, not something that appears on the nutrition pyramid! Folgers Black Silk Coffee does not contribute anything to one's daily recommended allowance of anything. In fact, the canister does not have any ingredients, so I am forced to assume all that is in this blend is coffee beans, which would fit what it tastes like.
This is a caffeinated blend, though and it feels like it! This has enough caffeine to pop one's eyes open between the taste, aroma and caffeine. Because it is a caffeinated coffee, it appears to not have undergone any of the chemical processes that sometimes cause complications in decaffeinated coffees.
Storage/Clean-up
Black Silk Coffee ought to be stored sealed in its container with the top firmly on. Coffee is known to absorb flavors of food nearby it, so keeping the top on is highly recommended. There are different schools of thought on refrigerating open coffee and I have a very clean refrigerator with a lot of ways to segregate coffee, so I tend to come down on the side of refrigerate it. Stored properly, this coffee might have easily made it to the November 3, 2013 expiration date found on the bottom, but we didn’t let it survive that long!
After brewing, coffee grounds ought to be disposed of. This does not seem like an ideal coffee to make a second pot with (second brewings I attempted came out 1/2 to 5/8 as potent as the first brewing) unless one is in a household with a number of people some who like powerful coffee and others who like powerful water. These grounds may be thrown in the trash when used or put in a compost pile, if available. Coffee grounds make great compost and I swear the pine tree I've been putting these grounds around has shot up since I started caffeinating the ground around it!
Overall
Folgers Black Silk Coffee is an incredible coffee that truly is good from first pot to the final grounds that are at the bottom of the canister. This, despite the added expense, might be the ideal dark blend to stock up on for fans of very black, rich, coffee!
For other coffee reviews, please visit my reviews of:
Tim Horton’s Fine Grind Coffee
Starbucks Café Estima
Kahlua Mocha Coffee
9/10
For other food or drink reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!
© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |
No comments:
Post a Comment