Maple Bacon Coffee: Or is it?

A couple weeks (or months) ago Eick sent me an email asking me if I enjoyed coffee. As a grad student still working a regular job, I simply chewed on the coffee grounds I store in my cheek and answered, “Yes Eick, of course.”

Baconfreak.com, the same company that brought you Bacon Floss (don’t try to order it you greedy bastards, they’re out of stock ZOMG!) had sent Eick some interesting coffee, for free of course. This was no ordinary coffee.  It has to have bacon in it, right? It just has to.  Baconfreak sends me not only coffee but a press kit in which the word “bacon” is misspelled even on the McDonald’s menu when I was there. I went from kind of irked by bacon’s continual cultural “it” factor to wondering if this isn’t some elaborate prank, where Eick is trying to bring on my bacon-fueled emotional collapse.  However, it’s free and we ran out of our grocery store brand.

The bag smells like sugary coffee, but in a special, very putrid way. My wife tried to sum it up into words but she stops short upon viewing the label on the bag. To wit:

I am once again led to ask if I’m the only person terrified by a biker with the head of a tiny pig.  Also, this illustration reminds that every animal on God’s great earth deserves a soul patch.

Upon opening the bag and grinding the beans, the strong sugary smell diminishes.  I throw it all into my french press and wait for the smell of bacon.

And wait.

It doesn’t come.  Confused, the wife and I pour a mug each and continue sniffing and sipping the coffee.  A slight flavor of maple comes to mind, but nowhere in this dark caffeinated brew do I sense the essence of swine.  The coffee is fine unto itself, albeit a little sweet for my taste.  The disappointment is palpable.  They didn’t put a maple tree on the bag wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket and soul patch.  They put a pig.  I feel betrayed.

We give it a couple days and one our friends comes over.  We offer maple bacon coffee and he is disturbed but interested.  Upon making a stronger batch than last time in hopes of bringing out the bacon, I hand him a mug and he slugs it down.  He agrees.  No flavor of bacon whatsoever.

I don’t admit to having the best palette in the world, but I’ve worked in a fine coffee shop where all of the beans were roasted on the premises.  They made flavored coffee too, although I won’t divulge their secrets.  All I can tell you is that Boss Hog Maple Bacon Coffee tastes like decent coffee beans with light maple sugar flavoring.  There is unfortunately not a hint of bacon to be found, save for the name on the bag.

If you are a bacon lover, I would think this coffee may disappoint.  It’s not that it’s bad coffee, it’s just that its taste does not attain the lofty heights its name implies.