Culture

8 Coffees to Give You a Kickstart in the Morning

If you need help waking up, these coffees will perk you up in no time flat.

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If you’re someone who has serial trouble getting up and starting the day, you might be in dire need of some seriously strong coffee. Whether you’re looking for something light and creamy or sweet and savory, there are tons of different flavors out there for you – but the ones we’ve chosen alternate between being overtly caffeinated or just a pleasant pick-me-up to get your day underway. Don’t keep hitting the snooze button. Just grab one of these delicious cups of Joe.

1. Original Donut Shop Keurig Single-Serve K-Cups

The Original Donut Shop coffee is lauded as being one of the most pleasant K-Cup varieties you can buy. It’s a medium roast which has a bold yet clean flavor and aroma and is a great choice for any time of day. You can offer almost any coffee drinker a cup of Donut Shop and they’ll gladly drink it. The lack of bitterness and acidity makes it a great coffee to have on hand if entertaining company or for those early morning meetings.

However, its amiability is also its weakness. Donut Shop coffee is satisfying but lacks any defining character. You won’t get the complex flavors and aromas with Donut Shop coffee that you do with other varieties. However, it’s a great choice when you’re dealing with groups of people or just want a satisfying cup of coffee without having to put much thought into it.

2. Green Mountain Coffee Sumatran Reserve, Dark Roast Coffee

In contrast to the Donut Shop coffee above, Green Mountain’s Sumatran Reserve is much more likely to be divisive. Sumatran Reserve is a much darker, robust coffee than many people are used to, but is an excellent gateway to the wider world of gourmet coffee. Of the dark roasts, Sumatran Reserve is probably the one most likely to tantalize a coffee novice’s tastebuds.

It’s a sweeter tasting coffee and gives hints of brown sugar along with an almost tropical sweet sensation that makes it a delight to wake up to. Sumatran Reserve is a great choice for those who want something a more robust profile than your typical breakfast coffee. It’s also inoffensive enough to offer to co-workers and guests whose coffee preferences you may not have gauged yet.

3. Death Wish Ground Coffee, Dark Roast

If you have a really hard time waking up in the morning you probably need a little more caffeine than others. Fortunately, you don’t have to pound Red Bulls and chew on Excedrin to get that boost anymore. Death Wish coffee packs twice the caffeine into each cup and does it all naturally. Caffeine by itself has a bitter taste, which is why I expected Death Wish to taste okay at best.

The process the company uses to produce the Death Wish blend doesn’t add any sort of bitter or artificial taste. While it’s not the best tasting coffee I’ve ever drank, Death Wish is much better than it has any business being, especially since the allure is the extra caffeine.If you find yourself drinking multiple cups of coffee in the morning to wake up and would rather just have one powerful one Death Wish is the way to go. It still has a refreshing coffee taste while packing twice the wake-up punch.

4. Starbucks Breakfast Blend, Medium Roast

Sometimes you just want some real stereotypical coffee. When I find myself tired of comparing flavor and aroma profiles, but still want some quality coffee, I pour a cup of Starbucks Breakfast Blend. Like Donut Shop, Starbucks Breakfast Blend is a great inoffensive coffee. It’s a medium roast, but it has a profile closer to a light roast. It has a very clean and tangy flavor that isn’t overpowering in the least. Starbucks Breakfast Blend is a wonderful coffee to have with meals. It works as a palate cleanser, but doesn’t have the boldness to it that can feel a bit overbearing when you’re eating.

5. Community Coffee and Chicory, Medium Dark Roast

Some coffee snobs might look down their nose at the mixture of chicory and coffee made famous in New Orleans, but for those who enjoy it without pretense there’s no substitute. Community’s blend of coffee and chicory maintains an excellent ratio between the two ingredients, and helps them to complement each other perfectly. The sweetness of the Chicory complements the bold, slightly-acidic nature of the medium roast beans and filters out the bitter flavor.

This leaves you with an earthy, slightly sugary profile that brings the best out of both ingredients. Along with the unique taste the blend of chicory and coffee brings, you also get two practical advantages with this product. The chicory acts as a sweetener, which means you don’t have to add any if you’re the type who is inclined to do so. Additionally, since chicory is caffeine-free you can more easily moderate how much caffeine you’re taking in.

6. Gevalia Signature Roast, Light Roast

Gevalia Signature Roast is another very cheery coffee. It’s great for perking you up but is almost uncoffee-like in how mild its flavor and aroma is. A cup of Gevalia Signature Roast has a crisp, citrus taste to it that makes it more thrist-quenching than the majority of coffees I’ve drank. As such, it’s amazing if you’re enjoying a breakfast of fruit and don’t want a coffee that will clash with those flavors.

7. Seattle’s Best Coffee Very Vanilla Flavored, Medium Roast

This artificially-flavored concoction is actually not that bad. I’m not a fan of flavored coffees because I feel like if you’re masking the flavor of the coffee you should try a different kind or just not drink coffee altogether. However, if you or someone you know is flirting with the idea of becoming a coffee drinker but don’t want to jump in all at once, Seattle’s Best Coffee Very Vanilla might be a good place to start. The vanilla flavor of this coffee isn’t completely overwhelming, so some notes of the coffee still make it through. For those who hate coffee or just want to dip their toe in the world of coffee this isn’t a terrible way to do it.

The main reason Seattle’s Best Coffee Very Vanilla is on our list is because it’s got enough coffee flavor to make a decent compromise if you have to share with someone who doesn’t actually want to drink anything decent.

8. Volcanica Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, Medium Roast

Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is one of the most prized (and most expensive) varieties in the world. When you get into JBM territory you get to start talking about coffee like it’s a fine wine or expensive perfume. Volcanica is one of the more accessibly distributors of Blue Mountain Coffee since you can find them on Amazon and its coffee carries the Coffee Industry Board of Jamaica certification that lets you know this is the real deal. So, why does this coffee cost more per ounce than some coffees do by the pound? Well, it’s one of the best tasting coffees you’ll ever experience.

A lot of the time we tend to confuse a dark roast for a full body, and nothing exemplifies that more than Jamaican Blue Coffee. This variety has a extremely rich profile for a medium roast and is absolutely wonderful to the tongue. It has a deep fruitiness that is reminiscient of Asian coffees like the Sumatran Reserve on this list, but is much more complex. It’s moderately acidic, but not bitter, and has a earthy, mildly nutty background throughout that gives solid foundation and ties the disparate flavors together. Volcanica’s Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee is like the Bugatti of the coffee world. Sure, every car has four wheels, but once you’ve driven this one everything else seems subpar.