The Keurig K-Cup Dark Roast Pod That's A Let-Down In The Flavor Department

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From blonde to continental to midnight, it's different strokes for different folks — and different types of coffee roasts for different coffee fans. Keurig has a K-Cup to fit every taste, but if your go-to brew is a steaming cup of dark roast, allow us to offer one pearl of advice: Steer clear of Community. In Tasting Table's ranking of 11 Keurig dark roast K-Cup brands, Community's signature blend dark roast fell to last place ... and we'd rather it stayed in the dark, to be frank.

It's not that Community's dark roast is undrinkable. It's that, with the kaleidoscope of other, better dark roast K-Cups available on the market and in basically every grocery store, why would you? To defer to a Biblical criticism, "[Y]ou are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:15-16). Diehard coffee drinkers might be rocking a bit of a God complex before their morning cuppa joe, and alas, Community's dark roast K-Cup neatly fits the bill for a neither-here-nor-there spitter-outter. As our reviewer noted, "Community's dark roast K-cup isn't bad, per se, but it's not one I'm apt to reach for given the plethora of other K-cup pod options. It makes an average cup of coffee at best, and is missing the deep richness that I expect from a quality dark roast."

In the highly competitive contemporary coffee market, roasters typically describe their coffees as "dimensional," "nutty," "100% arabica," or "brewed with mountain spring water." The official Community website, however, doesn't offer an enticing description for its signature blend dark roast beyond saying it's "a dark roast blend with notes of decadent dark chocolate." It also says it's been serving this blend "for more than 100 years" — and, by our count, it might be time to try a different approach. Sometimes, you really can beat the classics. Fans expect a rich, full-bodied, robustness from a coffee labelled as "dark roast," a criterion upon which Community's K-Cups sadly don't deliver. The jury's still out on any real or alleged chocolate tones.

"Boring" isn't even its chief sin. Brewed, Community's dark roast also prominently featured a dirty, muddy, bitter yet somehow still weak flavor that the other K-Cup dark roasts in our taste test didn't demonstrate. As one Walmart reviewer echoes, "Sorry but this coffee is not good. It is bitter and sour with a dirty taste" (yikes). Most of the positive Amazon reviews praise the low price point, and indeed, Community's dark roast is a high-value K-Cup option. But, if you ask us, coffee-lovers are better off sticking to Death Wish Dark Roast K-Cups, which took first-place in our ranking — and either way, always be sure to use your Keurig machine properly to get the most out of every cup.