Know what isn't lame though? A good full cup of this dark roasted coffee. I usually brew my own coffee at work with a French press (much to the continual amazement of my coworkers) and recently I felt the need to switch from my usual go-to get-up-and-go. I'm glad France and Italy got over any hard feelings from the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis a few years back and managed to combine efforts to make this kind of caffeinated beverage possible. For me, a good cup of coffee is strong, vibrant, with a little character, and it sure as heck shouldn't taste burnt. That's pretty much this. There's three types of beans (Costa Rican Tarrazu, Colombian Excelso, New Guinea Koban, if you're a coffee bean buff) which have much more flavor than, say, Sanka or whatever brown mulch my work uses for coffee. Each cup I've had of this has tasted well-balanced yet bold, and rich and well-flavored enough that I can usually get away without putting any sugar in it and only a sparse amount of cream. Not that's it's sweet or anything, because it's not. It's just good, kinda earthy, kinda nutty, and has more than enough caffeine to put me in a good mood for the day without buzzing like a banshee.
I've brought this home on the weekend for Sandy and I to enjoy...well, enjoy's too strong a word for her. Tolerate? Maybe. Sandy just doesn't like her coffee tasting like, well, coffee, and has to have all sorts of flavor shots and loads of sugar a la Dunkin Donuts to really like her coffee. Eh, I enjoy that stuff, too. "It's just too dark for me," she says, "although not burn-y. That's good." She's going through more of a green tea/steamed milk/hot chocolate kick right now anyways, so that may contribute slightly to her non-enthusiasm. We had a couple over for brunch the other weekend where we served this, and it was a definitely hit for me and the other guy ("wow," he said), so apparently it's all dependent on your preference. To be honest, I don't recall the exact price of this, but I think the can runs somewhere in the $6-$7 range, which isn't bad at all. I still like the chicory-laced brew a tad better, which I gave a four, so I think I'll go 3.5 here. Not a bad change-up, and it'll definitely make my work-coffee rotation. Sandy? For the aforementioned reasons, she's slapping it with a 2.5.
Bottom line: 6 out of 10 Golden Spoons