Is Trader Joe’s Pour-Over Bag Ideal for Convenient Coffee Making?
People who truly love their coffee are always looking for ways to drink good coffee indoors that are not conducive to making coffee, and Trade Joe’s strives to meet that need with a handy small pouched coffee bag complete with a spout.
The idea is simple: you simply unscrew the tip of the spout and open the top of the bag, pour hot water up to the filling line, let it sit for four minutes and pour the coffee into cups. It’s a great idea, but the product is only as good as the coffee it makes, so I called my coffee snob friend – you may remember Chris from this little experiment – to help me assess the situation.
The first thing Chris pointed out to me is that while it’s called a “pour coffee brewery,” the system is actually more of a hybrid of filtered and French press, as TJ’s notes on the back of the bag. When it comes to personalizing your drink, you can tweak several parameters to influence flavor and strength. While you cannot adjust the grind size – which is smaller than a typical French press grind but coarser than a drip grind – you can adjust the temperature and amount of water, and you can leave it in the bag for a longer or shorter period of time than recommended four minutes.
Trader Joe’s does not indicate a specific brewing temperature – just “hot”, so we boiled the water before pouring it. We also avoided measuring cups because we assumed that anyone using this bag, whether on a hike or at work, would not. ” Don’t want to deal with unnecessary equipment. We had two bags, so we filled one to the 10 oz mark and the other to the soft mark.
Since the bags were not exactly rigid, it was difficult to determine exactly when we “hit” the target lines.
After waiting for the recommended four minutes, we poured coffee into mugs. While the bag claims enough coffee for “about two cups,” we found that both batches were enough to fill one mug. Then we took a sip.
“Ugh. I hate this!” I said, surprised by my overly emotional reaction. Chris had a softer look. “It’s like having coffee in a diner,” he said, “which is kind of reassuring.” I took another sip and noticed that it reminded me of the Folgers my grandmother had prepared in front of the church. The packaging boasts flavors of “dark chocolate and nuts,” but it’s unclear which nuts we should be trying. Inamed a few nuts to help us define the flavor, and finally settled on unpeeled peanuts, like at Five Guys or at the bar. When it comes to chocolate, we have more cocoa nibs than chocolate and I think that’s okay. Comparing the two games, I couldn’t tell them apart even a little, like Chris.
Basically, this little system makes a mediocre cup of coffee pretty easy and I wouldn’t buy it again. If you really enjoy diner coffee and want to sip it while you’re camping outdoors or sitting at your desk, this product might be for you.