Eight O' Clock Tanks

[Mister Moo]

"If you're looking for a standout among blended coffees, you may be disappointed. Blends, the best-selling type of ground coffee, contain beans from at least two regions or countries. Of the 24 ground caffeinated blends we tested, none was excellent or very good. " - ConsumersReports.org


For the past year or two Eight O'Clock brand coffee, once the mainstay of "very good" to "excellent" grocery store coffee, has been tasting like less than average crap. It was the only mass-merchant brand I could buy with confidence and expect a pot of coffee that was on the high side of good. I stopped buying it as a fill-in to my homeroasted coffee several years ago because it had fallen off so far. I'd buy a bag every once in a while to see what was up but, each time, feh. And this week Consumers Reports dropped the Eight O'Clock rating below "Very Good." Too bad for coffee lovers. This used to be a great tasting and reliable brand. Their reasoning for failing quality in blended coffees was flawed, I thought, and doesn't explain the decline in blends labeled "100% arabica."

Back to the BBQ roaster when the ice thaws.

Eight O' Clock is horrible coffee, but I know a lot of people who drink the stuff.

[germantown rob]

I know the economy has hurt the little roasters in about 20% reduction of sales but who'd thunk it would get 8odClock?

[Mister Moo]

Originally Posted by ChicagoWhiteSox

Eight O' Clock is horrible coffee, but I know a lot of people who drink the stuff.

My experience (and the Consumers report) is with their basic EOC, a blend. It is possible that their 100% Columbian stands up better but, fact is, I've never liked it very much and haven't bought it in many years. Maybe it's great - dunno. I think EOC used to be good and that, since it crapped out, lots of folks just haven't noticed. Partly they have bad brewers to begin with and partly poor taste memory.

Taste memory, the experts say, is very short. I experienced taste memory with a brand of beer (Strohs Signature) that upon introduction (1975?) was, for sure, equal to anything I drank while I lived in Germany but, over the first year from its introduction, slowly degraded. It took me at least another year to catch on. After the beer had more-or-less sucked for a good while I finally noticed it tasted like, uh... swill; I had been buying an embossed label and a unique bottle shape and totally missed the taste change. (I met an exec from Strohs years later who explained what happened to the brand and why - and that brewers will, in fact, play on peoples bad taste memory.)