Starbucks' Latin America Breakfast Blend Coffee

Coffee drinkers may not understand what the term "Breakfast Blend" really means when it comes to coffee quality. When coffee roasters and manufacturers make coffee, the level of roasting they do to the green beans determines, in part, the caffeine content in the final product. The longer you roast the beans, and the darker the beans are, the lower the caffeine content.

This may come as a shock to espresso drinkers: espresso, as a dark roast, has less caffeine bean-per-bean than lighter roasts. Espresso, on the other hand, is more concentrated, so that shot of espresso in that latte packs a caffeine wallop drop-per-drop.

Breakfast blend is a light roast designed to have a high caffeine content. Java drinkers drink their cup of Joe in the morning to get a slight boost, so the whole idea behind "breakfast blend" is to give that boost in the form of more caffeine in each cup. In other words: drink breakfast blend in the morning, and French roast later in the day to regulate the volume of caffeine in the bloodstream at any given time. Of course, caffeine addicts will find the previous words to be a form of heresy, and will revoke this writer's Starbucks Visa Rewards card shortly.

Starbucks, the country's largest coffee chain (unless Dunkin' Donuts is considered a "coffee" chain rather than a "donut chain"), produces a wide array of coffees in different roasts for different tastes. The Latin America Breakfast Blend variety is often served as the coffee of the day; it is a perfect pick-me-up for java fiends. Not too strong, not too weak, the coffee is dark enough for those who want a rich, bold taste, but light enough to avoid a bitter aftertaste, or to turn the coffee from brown to barely brown after adding a half cup of whole milk to the cup.

Starbucks' Latin America Breakfast Blend comes in bean form as well, for customers to take home. Starbucks' barristas will grind the selection for customers at the coffee counter, or drinkers can take the whole beans home and grind them at will as desired. There is no "right" way to approach the whole bean question. Java fiends will argue that whole beans should be refrigerated, or frozen, or [insert contentious comment on whole beans], but if you drink a pound of coffee per week in your household, there's no major worries about how to store the Starbucks' latin America Breakfast Blend, because you will consume it before it can possibly turn rancid.

In this writer's household, this Starbucks blend meets the needs of two wildly divergent java freaks: the light roast fanatic and the misguided dark-roast fan (guess which one this writer might be...). As a high-caffeine, low-bitter selection, Starbucks' Latin America Breakfast Blend hits all the right palate notes for that morning brew.