Light roasts or blonde roasts are a much milder, gentler way to enjoy your coffee. Traditionally, coffee is roasted until the beans are a dark brown, even black. Light roasts, however, aim for a lighter flavor by cutting roasts short. The standard color for light roasts is a very light brown, almost like cinnamon.
Whether light roasts are superior or not is something we will not discuss today – instead, we’ll be looking at how best to enjoy light roast coffee. In particular, we’ll take a look and some of the best K-Cups in the market right now for light roast coffee lovers.
The Best Light Roast K-Cups
Caribou Coffee ‘Daybreak Morning Blend’ Light Roast K-Cups
No time of the day is better to enjoy a lighter roast than early morning. Caribou Coffee offers this light roast coffee for us to enjoy high quality coffee (full of caffeine, too!) that is full of flavor nonetheless.
Rainforest alliance certified, kosher, and of premium quality. Subtle fruit taste, natural sweetness and floral overtones.
Starbucks Veranda Blend Blonde Roast K-Cup Pods
This blend deserves a spot among the Starbucks better coffees. Using different varieties of blonde roast beans, get the veranda blend – an incredibly tasty coffee with tasting notes as exotic as toasted malt and baking chocolate.
Elaborated with 100% arabica coffee beans of the highest quality possible, this light roast blend is of great quality and has an incredibly rich flavor profile which will surely leave you wanting for more.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Breakfast Blend (Light-Roast)
Green mountain is a brand of 100% recyclable K-Cups. Now, you can enjoy a light roast coffee that is rich in taste while being low and bitterness and acidity well still being mindful of the environment!
This breakfast blend combines several milder beans which are all tied together with a light roast, giving you a deep, rich and sophisticated flavor.
Victor Allen Morning Blend Keurig K-Cups
Victor Allen’s morning blend enters our list because of its incredible fragrant aromatic coffee.
Blended and roasted in the USA, this morning blend is perfect for drinking it along with your breakfast, by itself as breakfast, or any other way possible. Its mild flavor combined with a fragrant aromatic profile make it perfect for any occasion. Truly a morning blend that will adapt to your morning routine.
Laughing Man Ethiopia Sidama Single-Serve K-Cups
Ethiopian coffee is renowned around the world for being one of the best. After all, coffee originated in Ethiopia, probably thousands of years ago. This light roast coffee gives us the authentic taste of Ethiopian coffee: aromatic, sophisticated, and mild.
This is 100% arabica coffee, kosher and fair trade certified.
Buyer’s Guide
Now that we’ve seen our options, let’s talk about how we should go about choosing. Although we’ve put forward some of the best options, coffee’s all about personal taste: some of these might be ideal for you, some of them might be the complete opposite of what you like.
Flavor
Fortunately, in terms of flavor, blonde roasts are surprisingly similar. This is mostly because the levels of acidity and bitterness are virtually the same in all light roasts: low.
Still, be mindful of tasting notes advertised in your coffee. If you’re a fan of fruit-like or floral flavors in your coffee, seek out coffee that provides that kind of flavor. Light roasts can range from fruity to nutty to having absolutely different flavors like chocolate and caramel.
Value
K-cups are definitely up there in terms of price range because they are a one-use product. It is important you narrow down your choice to at least three different products and calculate how much you’re paying per single k-cup, and then compare your choices. If you’re not going for cheapest, at least make sure the option you want is not a blatant rip-off in terms of value.
If your option is specialty-grade or gourmet (single origin, etc), then a higher price is probably justified – but only in these cases.
Quality
It is not hard to find quality coffee when it comes to k-cups. We k-cup drinkers are quite loud about our opinion on certain coffees, and bad products (or the worst of products, at least) are quickly shot down by online reviews.
Still, we recommend staying within products on this list, of the same brands, and related. Always check reviews and do not trust any product that has either none reviews or very few of them.
Origin
Great coffee comes from countries of great reputation. There’s only about fifteen countries that can grow coffee in the world; although this may change in the future because of global warming! Let’s be optimistic about it!.
So, whenever you’re choosing light roast coffee, be mindful where it comes from. Personally, we recommend Ethiopia, Colombia and Kenya – along with any Central American country, as their beans are ideal for light roast coffee.
FAQ
How much caffeine is in light roast coffee k-cups
The official Keuring site says that “Our coffee contains between 75 and 150 mg. of caffeine per 8 oz. cup. Caffeine content is influenced by the natural variation (agricultural) and amount of coffee in the pod.”
Which is just about right! Some people say that caffeine content is also influenced by the type of roast – although this has been largely debunked. A light roast contains roughly the same amount of caffeine than a dark roast and vice versa.
Are k-cups bad for you?
Not at all! Like everything else in life, however, consume in moderation. Even oxygen can be fatal if we ingest too much of it, too quickly!
The usual recommended amount of coffee cups a day is between two and four. And while the amount of coffee one should have to drink to officially overdose is more than anyone would care to drink in one sitting, it can still happen.
As long as you watch yourself and limit your coffee consumption to two-four cups a day, they will in no way be bad for you.
Do dark roast coffee k cups have more caffeine?
Technically, no. While some say that darker roasts have more caffeine, this is based on the fact that coffee beans become smaller when roasted dark. Meaning that per square inch there should be more caffeine than in lighter roasts, where beans are twice the size of their dark counterparts.
This effect, however, is offset by caffeine being burned off during roasting; the longer coffee roasts, the more caffeine it loses. So, in the end, it all balances itself out.
