Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup Flavors, Ranked

Coffee is an essential, inescapable, and completely nonnegotiable part of many people's mornings (and potentially afternoons and late nights, too). If you need a little extra energy, you know where to find it: the caffeine in your cup of coffee. Sometimes, you find yourself pouring another cup of coffee even when you don't really need it; you just want it because its bitter yet smooth taste slowly but surely grows on you. Eventually you're indifferent about the flavor, and then before you know it, it's the best part of your day. That's one of the many magical qualities of coffee.

In a world where coffee shops are one of the most important destinations in any city and Starbucks is a household name, it goes without saying that there are innumerable different ways to consume coffee, and innumerable different kinds to choose from. One of the easiest and most convenient methods for preparing your morning cup is using a Keurig.

A Keurig is a coffee maker that uses pods of ground coffee, called K-Cups, and filters water through each pod to create a fully powered brew at the push of a button. It's worth noting that you can recycle used K-Cup pods, an added bonus to using a Keurig rather than contributing yet another cup to the landfill. One brand that makes consistently good K-Cups is Green Mountain, so we decided to taste and rank a wide assortment of their products to find our favorite.

Sometimes you don't want your coffee to taste like anything except coffee. Bells and whistles, sweeteners, "notes of x, y, and z" — all of it can take a back seat to the experience of a good, basic cup of coffee. That's what the Nantucket Blend does best.

This is a coffee for anyone. It's an agreeable medium roast, neither too bright nor too dark, devoid of bitterness or pungency. There is a complex, carefully selected flavor undercurrent to this blend, but when it all comes together in your mug, it just tastes pleasantly cohesive. We found it to be an ideal standard choice for a weekday morning.  

This mellow coffee is a great co-star to some simple, dippable cookies. And since the best cookies are homemade, we would love to share our old-fashioned butter cookies recipe. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better accompaniment to this cup of coffee.  

We clearly tried many Green Mountain coffees to accomplish this ranking, but we were most looking forward to sampling a sip of the creative Chocolate Dipped Pistachio. Hazelnut coffee is a standard flavor for coffee beans, almost as common as vanilla, and we have seen other nuts advertised on packages before — but this was the first we had seen of pistachio.

Anytime chocolate is involved in coffee, you expect the end result will taste something like a mocha. But actually, the chocolate flavor in this variety was under the radar. In fact, it was a little hard to find, so we determined that the chocolate element probably just contributed to making the coffee taste a little more cocoa-forward and silky smooth. The same went for the pistachio taste; rather than experiencing the fragrant, buttery flavor of pistachios, we just got a light hint of general nutty flavor. 

If this variety had been advertised as "Chocolate Dusted Almond" rather than Chocolate Dipped Pistachio, we wouldn't have known the difference. But this still a nice coffee, with some light notes of chocolate and nuts that are subtle and intriguing. 

If you prefer to undercut the slightly bitter, slightly controversial taste of pure coffee with a flavored bean, we completely understand. It also just changes things up once in a while if your regular coffee routine is getting stale, and nobody wants stale coffee. But be warned — for better or worse, Wild Mountain Blueberry Green Mountain Coffee is a wild pick.

Blueberries and coffee might not instantly go together, but before you run in the other direction, consider the impeccable morning experience of eating a fresh, fluffy, bakery-style blueberry muffin alongside a cup of your favorite coffee shop brew. It's just one of those simple joys in life. And we got a solid iteration of that joy with minimal effort thanks to this little K-Cup. 

There isn't just a hint of fruity berries here, but a bold, juicy, unapologetic tribute to blueberries. It's strong. Make of that what you will: It's either going to be an absolute treat or an absolute threat, and we'll let you decide.

The Horizon Blend is crafted under the watchful eye of famed actor and director Kevin Costner. Sometimes affiliations with celebrities bring out the absolute worst in a brand, but we are not going to name names. This time, however, the collaboration brings us a lovely dark roast coffee with nothing to hide.

Horizon Blend isn't as pointed, brash, and unapologetic as other dark roasts. You don't necessarily have to be a black-coffee curmudgeon to enjoy this one. It's bold, yes, but also smooth and easy to drink. It's advertised as a bit earthy and smoky, and even if we didn't detect that specifically, we don't doubt that those hints created a full-bodied brew. We very much enjoyed it. 

If you're looking for a basic dark roast coffee that isn't too challenging, you will probably enjoy this one as much as we did. Another idea: If you are considering branching out into dark roast coffees instead of gentler, brighter light or medium roasts, the Horizon Blend is an excellent jumping-off point.

This particular cup of coffee was everything we were looking for in a dark roast. It's incredibly rich and has a certain amount of texture that felt unusual when drinking coffee that came out of a K-Cup. We would have sworn it was the result of freshly ground beans that were brewed in a French press, or another device allowing traces of the beans to slip into the cup. A slight chocolate taste was detectable, but beyond that, there were not as many specific flavor notes. That was due to the fact that Dark Magic mostly just tasted intensely dark.

If you're a Keurig skeptic who believes that the coffee maker could never brew something strong enough for your liking, this is the flavor for you — especially if you purchase a Keurig that has an optional "strong" setting (which probably will soon become mandatory). It is definitely one of the more, if not the most, bitter Green Mountain coffee blends that we tried, but sometimes that's exactly what you need to get through the day. Besides, it holds up extra well against a splash of half-and-half or your favorite creamer.

The Green Mountain coffee flavor Brown Sugar Crumble tastes a lot like it claims it will on the box. Actually, there is a difference — it tastes like a whole lot more. It's better than we ever expected it would be. Out of all the flavored coffee varieties from this brand (counting out roasts like Horizon Blend, Nantucket Blend, or Breakfast Blend), this one was the near-unanimous favorite.

It's all too easy for anything with "cinnamon" in the name to taste like someone just shook spice from the jar onto prepared food or beverages, and called it good (when usually it is not, in fact, good). But this K-Cup flavor tastes far more complex and well-thought-out than that. Instead, we got the sense that we were drinking a homemade coffee cake, with a heavy emphasis on the coffee. It's just so good. 

The best part is that even though the brown sugar is definitely noticeable, the coffee doesn't taste too sweet. There is a distinct savory, toasty flavor that keeps it from veering into cloying territory. After all, coffee cake is meant for breakfast, not for dessert. 

One of the newer additions to the Green Mountain coffee lineup is the Cinnamon Honey Drizzle ... and remind us, how were we drinking our coffee before this taste test? It feels like so long ago. Lately, all we've been wanting to drink is this. Maybe it's because this is such a light, bright, fresh take on coffee that completely delivers on flavor while still tasting like good coffee. This flavor might get old, but it certainly hasn't yet.

The first thing we liked about this coffee was the lovely, pleasant aroma as it brewed. Honey and cinnamon go together like, well, peanut butter and jelly. Honey creates a complex, golden, in-depth sweetness much more than regular white sugar. Also, while cinnamon isn't a sweetener, it so often gets paired with brown sugar or honey that the taste of cinnamon can trick you into thinking that you're eating something sugary. 

All that to say, this coffee is still regular black coffee when you make it in the Keurig, but it tastes like we have put in subtle drops of a sweet honey-cinnamon syrup — not enough to detract from the coffee, but enough to notice and love. It's very springy and moreish.