The Good: Caffeinated, Amazing aroma, Powerful taste, With sugar it does taste like vanilla!
The Bad: More expensive than other Folgers blends, Requires sugar to reach its flavor potential, Creamer nullifies its flavor!
The Basics: Folgers Vanilla Biscotti Coffee is a delightful gourmet blend, but only for those willing to sweeten their coffee.
I love coffee. I love coffee and I love the idea of flavored coffee, but experience has proven to me that flavored coffees are mostly the desired scent and not the actual flavor of coffee one is trying to get. So, it is always a pleasant surprise when I find a coffee that actually tastes like the flavor it promises, even if it needs just a teaspoon of help to get there. After trying the Folgers Gourmet Supreme (reviewed here!) and Folgers Black Silk coffees (reviewed here!), I was surprised when it was a Folgers coffee that next lived up to the flavor it promised. That flavor was Vanilla Biscotti, from the Folgers Gourmet Selections coffee line.
The Vanilla Biscotti coffee is good and it does have a vanilla flavor, but to get the flavor more than just the scent, one must add sugar or another sweetener to their coffee. That makes it a little tougher for me to enthusiastically recommend than I would like (I want things to taste like they promise unaltered). Still, the fact that Folgers managed to make a coffee that actually tastes like vanilla is pretty impressive in my book!
Basics
One of the dominant coffee roasters and distributors in the United States, Folgers produces a number of blends. Vanilla Biscotti is one of the newer blends in the Folgers Gourmet Selections line. The Folgers Gourmet Selections Vanilla Biscotti coffee is available in stores in a 12 oz. bag. Vanilla Biscotti is a medium dark premium blend from Folgers.
Vanilla Biscotti Coffee is an aromatic blend that smells potently of vanilla and it is a caffeinated blend.
Ease Of Preparation
Vanilla Biscotti Coffee is remarkably easy to prepare, no advanced culinary degrees necessary! First, open the bag. Folgers Vanilla Biscotti Coffee is vacuum sealed when first purchased, but opening the bag takes care of that. Vanilla Biscotti Coffee is intended for automatic (drip or percolating) coffee makers, like my Hamilton Beach coffee maker (reviewed here!). 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 Vanilla Biscotti 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 Vanilla Biscotti Coffee smells absolutely delightful. The aroma from the beans and the brewed coffee is sweet and distinct. This has a vanilla bean scent to compliment the coffee smell. This is one of the most delightfully aromatic blends I have had lately.
On the taste front, Vanilla Biscotti Coffee is bitter and predictably coffee flavored. There is no real vanilla flavor to the taste, though it does smell like vanilla. This is a medium dark coffee flavor that is more like concentrated coffee than any sort of burnt dark flavor. It is a very coffee flavored coffee.
With a teaspoon of sugar, Vanilla Biscotti Coffee takes on a surprisingly true vanilla flavor. The vanilla elements emerge when the bulk of the coffee flavor is sweetened to the back of the palate, making for a coffee blend that actually has a hint of vanilla to it! The coffee creamer I used completely cut the bitterness of this blend. There was, however, no trace of the vanilla flavor once the creamer was added.
The Vanilla Biscotti Coffee, rather surprisingly, leaves almost no aftertaste in the mouth. For such a strong initial coffee flavor, that there is no residual bitterness is very nice.
Nutrition
This is coffee, not something that appears on the nutrition pyramid! Folgers Vanilla Biscotti Coffee does not contribute anything to one's daily recommended allowance of anything. In fact, the bag does not have any ingredients, outside coffee and natural and artificial flavors.
This is a caffeinated blend and it feels like it! This has enough caffeine to pop one's eyes open between the taste, aroma and caffeine. This has no nutrients or calories, unless you add a sweetener or creamer to it.
Storage/Clean-up
Vanilla Biscotti Coffee ought to be stored sealed in its bag, sealed as tightly as possible. 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 December 1, 2013 expiration date found on it, 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.
Overall
Folgers Vanilla Biscotti Coffee is a delightful blend that surprised me by living up to its promised flavor surprisingly well. Anyone who likes coffee and vanilla and can handle a sweetener for pot after pot of coffee will want to pick this blend up!
For other coffee reviews, please visit my reviews of:
Tim Horton’s Fine Grind Coffee
Starbucks Café Estima
Kahlua Mocha Coffee
6/10
For other beverage reviews, please check out my Drink Index Page!
© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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