The Good: Amazing dark coffee flavor, Appropriately caffeinated, Great on its own or with creamer!
The Bad: A bit expensive
The Basics: Amora Intenso Blend Coffee is an amazing coffee, despite its price!
My wife is pretty amazing at finding me new, wonderful coffee blends to fall in love with. Recently, she tried a coffee subscription service and while her free trial ended with us deciding to continue to shop local instead, the coffee she got us online was pretty incredible. That first, wonderful blend was Amora Intenso Blend coffee. The Amora Intenso Blend is actually so impressive that it almost justifies its expense as a premium coffee. Amora Intenso Blend is a dark roast coffee that lives up to its flavor potential, with an inviting and strong coffee aroma and a flavor that holds up on its own or with creamer!
Basics
One of the premium coffee roasters and subscription distributors in the United States, Amora produces a number of blends. Intenso Blend is one of the darkest blends by Amora that my wife managed to find online. Intenso Blend is an intense, appropriately coffee flavored coffee that lives up to the serious coffee drinker’s expectations on its own or with additives. Amora Intenso Blend comes in an 8 oz. plastic bag of ground coffee. Because it is not whole bean, no grinding is required. Because it does not have any way to easily reseal the bag, the Intenso Blend Coffee is not easily protected from absorbing scents of other foods. Even so, given how quickly my wife and I went through this wonderful blend (less than a week after we first opened the bag), retaining freshness is hardly an issue!
Intenso Blend Coffee is an aromatic blend in and out of the bag and it is caffeinated.
Ease Of Preparation
Intenso Blend Coffee is remarkably easy to prepare, no advanced culinary degrees necessary! First, open the bag. Amora Intenso Blend Coffee is vacuum sealed when first purchased, but when the bag is cut open, it allows easy access to the ground coffee within. After cutting open the bag, procure a scoop (not included) and measure out one heaping tablespoon for every two cups of water in your coffee maker. Intenso Blend 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 Crucial Coffee #4 Permanent Coffee Filter (reviewed here), in which you put the Intenso Blend Coffee and then brew through your coffee maker. The directions recommend making a pot at a time. Amora does not make an explicit recommendation about refrigerating the bag after opening it, though they do recommend cool, dark and dry for places to store the coffee.
Taste
The Intenso Blend smells strongly like coffee. For those of us who love coffee, this beverage bears the aroma that perfectly embodies that of coffee. While that might seem obvious, Amore Intenso Blend lives up to what one hopes from a premium coffee in the aroma department.
On the tongue, the Intenso Blend is a strong coffee flavor that is dark without being overly bitter. Properly prepared, it has a forceful, full-bodied flavor that is like drinking three to four cups of coffee at once (it has a very concentrated coffee flavor). What bitterness the coffee does possess endures only for about five seconds after one has swallowed.
Creamer blends delightfully with the Intenso Blend coffee. All of the creamers we tried retain the creamer flavor and the strong coffee flavor of the Intenso Blend. That makes for a delightful combination of coffee and creamer that weaker coffees cannot boast. With a teaspoon of sugar, the Intenso Blend loses its bitter aftertaste and retains its strong coffee flavor.
Nutrition
This is coffee, not something that appears on the nutrition pyramid! Amora Intenso Blend Coffee does not contribute anything to one's daily recommended allowance of anything. In fact, the bag lists only 100% Arabica coffee as the only ingredient.
This is a caffeinated blend, though and it feels like it! This has enough caffeine to pop one's eyes open and I found it to be pleasantly caffeinated when I wanted to keep awake and the aroma itself opens one’s eyes and nose! 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
Intenso Blend 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 stayed fresh for years (I could not find an expiration date on our bag), but we went through the 8 oz. bag in less than a week after we opened it.
After brewing, coffee grounds ought to be disposed of. This does not seem like an ideal coffee to make a second pot with (though a second brewing came out 5/8 as potent, which is about as strong as a standard cup of weak/medium coffee). These grounds may be thrown in the trash when used or put in a compost pile, if available. Coffee grounds make great compost.
Overall
Amora Intenso Blend Coffee is an incredible coffee and apart from getting it via the Amora coffee subscription service, I have not seen it available (yet!). That said, whenever and wherever I can find it again, it is a blend I will stock up on and enthusiastically recommend. Because I go for variety as frequently as possible as a reviewer, the fact that this is a coffee I would hunt down and continue to consume is one of the best endorsements I can give for it. For those without a sophisticated palate or those who are not into dark coffee, Amora Intenso Blend might not justify its expense, but for serious dark coffee drinkers, this premium coffee justifies its premium price!
For other coffee reviews, please visit my reviews of:
Seattle’s Best Level Five
Maxwell House Dark Roast
Gevalia Medium/Dark Blend
8.5/10
For other drink reviews, please check out my Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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