Feature: Tim Hwang Drinks The Entire Berkman Coffee Supply For You
Since becoming a newly-minted full time employee of the Berkman Center for Internets and Society, I’ve become obsessed with the fascinatingly ungreen and terrifyingly advanced Keurig brand line of products that dispense coffee from those plastic containers that I can only assume are filled with magical pixie dust. Luckily, Berkman boasts a huge number of flavors, and I figured that it’s obvious for self-enrichment purposes to get around to tasting them all. The copy is reliably awesome, and the flavors virtually (?) indistinguishable. USBFB features our commentary, reviews, and incisive analysis every Tuesday until we’re exhausted. No coffee left behind. Previously: Espresso Blend.
This week: HAZELNUT. Which the authoritative copy describes, mysterious and haiku-like, simply as — “Hazelnut, Vanilla, Creamy.” Intriguing, and certainly a tantalizing promise of good pod coffee to any aficionado of the Keurig Coffee line of products.
However, my friends, these words of promise. These words are mostly lies perpetrated on the American public.
Unlike Espresso Blend, which delights in a playful, sophisticated bouquet of surprisingly natural flavors and scents, the flavor of Hazelnut follows a Lunchables-like adherence to flavor design. “Vanilla” here is a really broad term — used to describe this sickly, plastic-y, overwhelming disaster of a flavor. Hazelnut is the loud frat-boy of the Keurig Coffee World: simple, way too persistent, and putting all sorts of sketchy stuff into your drink.
Anyways, you get the idea.
Sitting in the Berkman Center’s kitchen is an absolute delight; seeing the faces of people as they make this most crucial of morning choices is, I imagine, like a really toned down version of watching life-and-death choices as some terminal care doctor. “Hazelnut,” people nervously say to themselves, “this will start the morning right.” They are wrong.
Going off the accepted wine-tasting standards, the drinking experience of Hazelnut is unsettling. It leads off with a mediocre (but acceptable) collection of peaty flavors, fake vanilla, and hints of oak. But, like the awful transforming lady in room 217 in “The Shining,” the nasty ass flavor of fake vanilla overtakes and turns the coffee into pure, unadulterated terror. What hazelnut flavors you’re supposed to pick up are obliterated by a completely overwhelming vanilla notes. By the time you realize this, of course, it is too late, and this is why Hazelnut continues to be consumed at a pretty good clip. They are wily ones over at Timothy’s World Coffee.
The fragrance follows a similar pattern, like the inexplicably tree shaped New Car Scent fresheners, what begins as a pleasantly acceptable odor rapidly becomes completely overwhelming. It recalls loud, sweaty dorm room parties with warm screwdrivers and a guy named Troy telling you about his girlfriend. All in all, way too much.
Like a hidden viper, Hazelnut looks just like coffee. It’s dark black, or brown. Or you know, whatever, coffee colored.
It is perhaps noting here that regrettably, like Espresso Blend, Hazelnut will give you some pretty awful coffee breath. Whatever chemicals they’ve used to pump out the fragile illusion of vanilla really coats the inside of your mouth and sticks for hours after you’ve had the coffee. However, unlike Espresso Blend, which is Fair Trade, the only unique feature of the coffee glean-able from the box is that it’s Parve. Which is sweet, though doesn’t make me feel much better about having to deal with the gross odor in my mouth (and makes me concerned about the limited set of kosher Keurig options).
Rating: D+, like the ugly duckling that grows into a monstrous, godforsaken carnivorous woodland beast, Hazelnut should be avoided by all travelers. Don’t even be a minor acquaintance.
