Coffee Review: Folgers Gourmet Supreme
Coffee culture has evolved a lot since I've been on the earth. I came of coffee-drinking age in the early 90s, right during the Starbucks Era. Perhaps more influential than actual Starbucks coffee, which I didn't even drink because we didn't have one in our town, was coffee shop culture itself, which blossomed in the 90s -- I have to think -- directly because of Starbucks. There have surely been books written about this...
Fast-forward to this bizarre and still-as-yet-hopeful Year of Our Lord 2021 in which Starbucks is now passe and coffee shop culture is over, not just because of COVID but because of laptops, smartphones, and the fact that people don't talk to strangers in public places anymore. Coffee shop culture is also dead because, even at your average grocery store chain (to say nothing of Whole Foods, or Fresh Market) you can find a selection of coffees and teas of such depth and variety as to paralyze you with choice. A person no longer has to go to a coffee shop to find good coffee.
In our age of small-batch, artisanal, locally-sourced, free-trade, single-origin everything, the varieties of coffee available are staggering. You are now able to trace the source of your coffee beans down to the grandmother of the person who planted the coffee tree. Each bag of beans comes with it a narrative...of it's sourcing, growth, shipping, roasting, bagging, of the founding of the company, the design of the logo, etc. etc. There is fully no excuse for you not to know the exact temperature, date, and location in which your coffee was roasted, and on whose shift in the factory, and what the oxygen levels were in the region at the time.
And hey...maybe we're better off because of that. After all, you can now brew really, really good coffee right at home, and according to whatever your tastes are. And we can all become experts. Me for example, I really like Costa Rican and Guatemalan coffees roasted using the "honey process." Four or five years ago I didn't even know they grew coffee in Costa Rica, let alone that there is a thing called the "honey process" (which I'm still not precisely sure what it is, but I have an idea). Nevermind the fact that all this takes up valuable room in our brains...which we would find a way to fill with semi-useless information anyway.
Thus, you may think it a bit odd that I am reviewing Folgers coffee, a brand that has been around since before most of us were even born and is almost so synonymous with standard, run-of-the-mill, factory-produced, 20th century coffee as to be almost forgotten at this point. I mean who even drinks Folgers anymore? This is the stuff that banks and car dealerships used to order in bulk to brew for their customers, prior to the advent of the Keurig (though I'm pretty sure Folgers is available in K-cups). The point is, the population of people under the age of 60 who voluntarily drink Folgers has got to be almost non-existent and, at this point, done purely because of cost or brand-loyalty.
So, yes, I will freely admit that my purchase of a 25 oz. tub of Folgers Gourmet Supreme grounds -- for $12 at Rite Aide -- was made somewhat ironically but also with a thought toward genuinely approaching this almost-forgotten brand with an unbiased palate. After all, at $12 per 25 oz. that puts the price of every cup of coffee well below $0.50 even if you're doing pour-over, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the $2.50 or so you pay on the street for a decent coffee. Perhaps it was time to start buying my coffee grounds at the drugstore again and save a few bucks?
Well...I'm about halfway through the tub and I have rediscovered, unequivocally, that there's a damn good reason why people make a fuss about fancy coffee. This stuff is coffee, that's for sure. But it lacks any distinct or prominent characteristics other than it's black, tastes kinda like coffee, and has caffeine. I'm not insulting Folgers here. It's not bad per se. It's just unremarkable and less than a pleasure to drink.
Does that really matter on a cold, February morning when you look to your hot cup of joe to bring you fully into another day of work? Less than you'd think. However, even given the most charitable view, this is just not the coffee I want to be spending the precious moments of my life with. This is the coffee of resignation, of the begrudging decision, the coffee of "goddam it, we're going up that hill at dawn and some of you ain't coming back." This is not the coffee of pleasant, rapidly-accelerating ruminations or toasty plans for the day, made while you lithely thumb through the pages of The New Yorker.
It's difficult to describe this coffee in any kind of "sensual" terms. It does not have "notes of blueberry," or licorice, or anything like that. It smells pretty much like coffee, but in that way that grape flavored gum tastes like grapes and simultaneously tastes nothing like grapes. Furthermore, it lacks any kind of "top end" aromas or flavors. There is very little texture or dryness, and not much of a finish. You do get a good bit of that deep-roast flavor (after all this is Gourmet Supreme) but it's very much overtaken by a certain bitterness that's hard to ignore. By all means, this will suffice for your AM cup, but it's not going to make any new friends.
I feel good having saved a few dollars by purchasing this tub of Folgers, but I can say that....if you have any other choice: don't buy this. Not unless you're in charge of hosting some kind of charity event (and who goes to those during a pandemic?) or you run a farm and need to make gallons of coffee every morning for your ranch hands or whatever.
No insult to Folgers here. They are what they are. They are putting out an honest product at a reasonable price. However, we as a coffee drinking society have moved on. Much further on. And we should all thank the Coffee Gods for that.
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