Monday, January 5, 2015

Coffee Flavor At The Mercy Of Temperature: Dunkin’ Donuts Apple Pie Coffee!


The Good: Good aroma, Moments of excellent flavor, Caffeinated.
The Bad: Flavor is very variable, Comparatively expensive
The Basics: If Dunkin’ Donuts Apple Pie coffee were a potpourri, it might deliver more consistent results than it does as a coffee beverage promising a baked good’s flavor!


For all the potential for me to become biased as a reviewer, nothing speaks to my resolve to be impartial like the way I tackle reviews like returning to a brand that has recently disappointed me. As Dunkin’ Donuts shops (reviewed here!) expand their lines into the home coffee brewing, I was excited to try their Jelly Donut flavored coffee (reviewed here!). After being disappointed by the Jelly Donut Coffee, I picked up the Dunkin’ Donuts Apple Pie coffee with a mixture of reluctance and professional dispassion.

I purchased the Apple Pie coffee on clearance and I discovered that it is a flavor of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee that has a very malleable flavor. Instead of having flavor that changes drastically with the mount of coffee used to brew the coffee, the Apple Pie coffee has drastically different flavors based upon its temperature! That makes it a coffee that is, at worst, inconsistent.

Basics

Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee has several different flavors and I found the bag of ground Apple Pie flavor coffee at my local grocery store on clearance. The Apple Pie flavored Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee comes ground in a foil bag and the 11 oz. package we found was on clearance for $4.19, which was a fair price, but would be a much tougher sell at its full price. The bright orange bag is easy enough to open and the eleven ounce standard package is resealable, thanks to a flat tie on the top of the bag.

Ease Of Preparation

Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee is easy to prepare. One Tablespoon of the Apple Pie Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee makes two cups of coffee. We brewed up our full pot in our Hamilton Beach coffee maker (reviewed here!). The Apple Pie coffee comes pre-ground and smells good and it is easy enough to scoop out and into a filter.

Taste

The Apple Pie coffee is a decently aromatic blend. While it is brewing, it fills the home with the scent of apple pie baking, which is pretty wonderful. The aroma emitted from the Apple Pie coffee is strong enough that the promised fruit pie elements of the scent easily overpower even the hint of the smell of coffee. I was intrigued by the fact that this coffee retained its pleasant aroma even as it cooled. While the scent picks up more of the cinnamon highlights than it has when it is hot and steaming, the Apple Pie Coffee is still strongly-scented and intriguing to the nostrils as it cools.

In the mouth, Dunkin’ Donuts Apple Pie coffee is momentarily surprising. At its hottest, the coffee is a mediocre medium coffee blend with a slightly sour aftertaste. But, what I discovered is after it cools about ten degrees from the freshest a pot of brewed coffee can be, the flavor actually comes out in the taste of the coffee. Instead of simply being a bland coffee flavor, the Apple Pie coffee pops with actual fruit flavor – sweet and sour – and strong accents of cinnamon, which is pretty much all one can hope for from an Apple Pie flavored coffee. Unfortunately, the flavor window seems to be temperature based and very narrow. As the coffee cools, it continues to taste like fruit, but the apple flavor treads almost entirely toward the sour range.

With creamer, the fruit flavors of the Apple Pie coffee are entirely sublimated. Even a mild sweet cream creamer completely overwhelms the fruit flavor of this coffee.

The Apple Pie coffee leaves one with a mildly sour aftertaste if the coffee was consumed without creamer and/or as the coffee cooled. Otherwise, this is a coffee that pretty much just leaves a coffee-flavored aftertaste, slightly bitter, for about ten minutes after one has drunk the last of it.

Nutrition

The ingredients to this coffee are virtually undisclosed. The bag lists the ingredients as coffee and artificial flavor, but nothing more descriptive than that.

In terms of nutrition, this coffee lacks any. One 8 oz. mug of this coffee provides nothing of nutritional value to the drinker. There are no calories (save what one adds from sugar or milk), no fat, sodium, or protein. The caffeine, however, is strong enough to perk one up! Between the aroma and the caffeine, this is a coffee that can help one get out of bed in the morning.

Storage/Clean-up

Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee tea is very easy to clean up after - the coffee grounds may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. The coffee itself is a very dark coffee and it will stain delicate fabrics, so if it spills, it ought to be cleaned right off things like tablecloths or light cottons.

Dunkin’ Donuts does not make a recommendation on refrigerating the bag, but ours remained just fine out of the refrigerator. This flavor maintains its freshness well and did not change over the time we had our bag open. Unopened, it would have lasted until August 26, 2015 before it went bad.

Overall

Dunkin’ Donuts Apple Pie coffee is good, but its inconsistency on the flavor makes it seem overpriced. Being forced to drink the pot of coffee during the ten minute window (ten minutes after it is done brewing until twenty minutes after brewing is completed yielded the best, truest, apple pie flavor!) makes this more of a hassle than a pleasure, though. The result is another Dunkin’ Donuts coffee blend I just could not recommend, though this one at least came close!

For other coffee reviews, please check out:
Starbucks French Roast coffee
Godiva Chocolate Truffle Coffee
Melitta Extra Dark European Blend

4/10

For other drink reviews, please visit my Food & Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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