So, here I am, two weeks late. I was not enjoying putting up Coffee Advent posts saying "This coffee wasn't good," or "This coffee was too syrupy", so I stopped posting altogether because, well, they were either not so good, or too syrupy. And then I got busy with life and such, and lo, here I am. Two weeks of coffee advent coffee's to catch up on. All things considered, I did drink them, so here is a quick summary.
Day 5: White Chocolate
You know, I really do love white chocolate. I know, it's not really chocolate as much as it is straight up sugar, but damn, it's tasty.
Not so much this coffee.
Give me a white chocolate bar with peanuts and I'm a happy man. Give me this coffee and I'm struggling to put it down.
Day 6: Hazelnut
This hazelnut flavour was actually not that bad. It wasn't very overwhelming, and hazelnut and coffee often go well together; when I fetch brewed coffee from nearby stores I will often add a dash of hazelnut flavoured cream to it. This one worked.
Day 7: Gingerbread Cookie
No. No no no, no, no. No.
I was uber-disappointed with this one. I love Gingerbread, as much as I love pumpkin. I make Gingerbread pancakes, cookies, snaps, and so forth. I love it.
Sadly, this coffee tasted like molasses. Nothing wrong with molasses. But not in my coffee. Ew.
Day 8: Holiday Blend
This one was definitely a winner. I've learned by this point to start making these coffees with 10oz of water; not 8 (which is what the case recommends), nor 12, but 10. It keeps the flavour good without either watering it down or letting it be overwhelming. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with cinnamon in Christmas coffee.
Day 9: Chocolate Coconut
I don't know how they flavoured this one, but it tasted neither like chocolate, nor coconut. It tasted.. just bad. This was the second coffee I dumped after a mouthful. Blaaaah.
Day 10: Salted Caramel
I went into tasting this one with some trepidation, as I typically don't like salted caramel. But.. meh. Not great. Not bad. Very meh. Neither overwhelming or underwhelming. Merely whelming. I wouldn't search it out, but at least I didn't find the need to dump this one.
Day 11: Caramel Vanilla
Caramel and Vanilla! Amongst all of them, these are two of my favourite things!
And yet Aldi's royally fucked this one up. Not even going to discuss it.
Day 12: Maple Cinnamon
At this point I'm beginning to think that Aldi's is just trying to get cute with flavours they can stuff into a coffee k cup. Maple Cinnamon makes a fine syrup flavour - if you have not mixed cinnamon in with maple syrup to dump on pancakes (gingerbread pancakes!) then you are missing out on one of life's most amazing things.
But in coffee, it can be missed.
Day 13: Cookies and Cream
Seriously, someone had a really bad idea once and decided to manifest that bad idea into a coffee flavour. They then decided to double down on this bad idea by smothering any last vestige of coffee flavour with artificial cookies and cream. I'm positive, upon initial taste testing, no one liked it, but they had already committed to producing it, so stuffed it into a coffee advent on the grounds of providing variety.
Pass on this one, please.
Day 14: Hot Buttered Rum
There are certain flavours that I occasionally enjoy in coffee. Rum isn't one of them. I've put coffee into whiskey, and that was good. I can't imagine putting coffee into rum.
Day 15: Chocolate Cherry
These flavours aren't getting any better at this point. I'm beginning to be interested in seeing what comes next, just to see what new flavours can be added to what should otherwise be a good cup of coffee. This one is just a no.
Day 16: Amaretto
Amaretto should really be a good coffee flavour. It really should. It's so similar to hazelnut that this should be tasty, and I should enjoy this.
I did not, but I was so determined to enjoy it that I felt I had to do something. The amaretto was so overwhelming that I thought that diluting it with a little more water would help. It did. Pallatable (sp?). Decent. It was okay. I was able to finish it.
Day 17: Butter Toffee
Seriously, how is this any different from Butter Nut Toffee? It's the same, just a different name. They're getting lazy, now, and the coffee was still as bad.
Day 18: Peppermint Mocha
Okay, now we're getting somewhere. As strange as it may seem, peppermint works well in coffee, and the mocha added to it provided a nice taste. This was a nice one to catch up on this post series with.
Previous entries in the Coffee Advent Series:
@wwwiebe/christmas-coffee-advent-day-4
@wwwiebe/christmas-coffee-advent-day-3
@wwwiebe/christmas-coffee-advent-day-2
@wwwiebe/christmas-coffee-advent-day-1
(c) All images and photographs, unless otherwise specified, are created and owned by me.
(c) Victor Wiebe
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