Bulletproof Coffee Tasting

Have you heard of Bulletproof Coffee? If you haven’t, the short-version theory is that coffee can be a health food if you get beans that are organic and free of mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are a form of mold that forms when beans are in the hold of ships and wet from their voyage at sea. In the health food world, this theory is not without controversy. Some argue that this whole worry about moldy beans is simply another way to gouge coffee drinkers.

Nonetheless, I’ve broken my five year no-coffee streak to try some of this supposedly new “superfood of the gods.” Bulletproof coffee drinkers start with this mycotoxin-free coffee, add MCT oil (basically, fractionated coconut oil – MCT stands for Medium Chain Triglycerides) and grass-fed-cows butter (key because grass-fed cows produce a different composition of milk than grain fed cows). The theory goes that your body can burn off the fat (rather than a sugary or carb filled breakfast), and your brain needs the fats to function optimally.

I’ve been playing around with Bulletproof Coffee with and without breakfast and really like how I feel with extra fats in my diet. Like any business however, there are competitors to the Bulletproof brand of coffee that also claim to be superfoods that are low in mold.

So, in the spirit of ensuring I was drinking the best of the best, I held a blind taste testing at my house with the grandest of the “I make serious health food claims” coffee brands. We tasted:

Longevity Coffee Dark & Light roasts
Bulletproof Coffee
Caveman Coffee Dark & Light roast
Blend of the 5 coffees, even ratios

Each coffee was ground with a burr grinder on the French Press setting and 2 Tablespoons of freshly ground coffee was used in individual Bodum French Presses. We steeped the coffee for 6 minutes, stirring the coffee grounds and hot water 10 seconds after adding the coffee grounds to the water.

After the coffee was steeped, we all tried an ounce of the coffee in the wedding-china my parents received when they got married (awwww). We drank the coffee black, without any cream or sugar. We tasted for fragrance/aroma, flavor, body and aftertaste. We even made scorecards to keep track of our scores, and write any additional notes.

Once we were done with our blind taste testing, we were astounded to find that we had ALL agreed on the Number One and Number Two favorite coffees (seriously, what are the chances?!).

They were ….

The Blend (are you kidding me?! 1 ounce of Longevity Coffee Light, 1 ounce of Longevity Coffee Dark, 1 ounce of Bulletproof Coffee, 1 ounce of Caveman Coffee Dark, 1 ounce of Caveman Coffee Light) followed closely by Caveman Coffee Dark Roast.

If you want to try the full Bulletproof Coffee trend, it’s 8 ounces of black coffee blended (in a blender) with 1/2 Tablespoon of grass-fed butter (like Kerrygold) + 1 Tablespoon of MCT (medium chain triglycerides – basically fractionated coconut oil) and blend it up. Note: this is basically the calories of a meal so don’t drink this AND eat your normal large breakfast or lunch. The Bulletproof Coffee trend is all about letting your body burn fat – not about eating fat and eating tons of carbs and fat on top of that.

Whether you try the Bulletproof Coffee recipe or drink the coffee black, Caveman Coffee Dark is our choice of the low mycotoxin coffees for a great every day, rich and robust coffee. Have you tried Bulletproof Coffee or eating the Bulletproof way? I would love to hear about your experience with it, including which brands of coffee you particularly enjoy.