Starbucks Natural Fusions Caramel Review
The Drink: Starbucks Natural Fusions Caramel
Type: Ground Flavored Coffee
Overall Rating: 3.5 Out Of 5 Coffee Mugs
I have a serious weakness for anything caramel, from Weather’s Original caramel candy to caramel flavored ice cream. I couldn’t wait to the taste the Starbucks Natural Fusions Caramel flavored coffee.
The Starbucks Natural Fusions is the Seattle coffee company’s entry into the the flavored coffee market. You should seeing these flavored coffees in your grocery store soon. A lot of coffee companies use chemicals to flavor their coffees, Starbucks uses natural ingredients. They come in three flavors: caramel, cinnamon and vanilla. The vanilla impressed me and I’ll post a review of the cinnamon soon.
When I brewed the Starbucks Natural Fusions Caramel, I smelled a sweet caramel flavor. Further inspection revealed hints of strawberries so real that I checked the ingredient list just to make sure they weren’t really there.
The taste caught me a little off guard. It had a strong dark roast flavor. At first, it was almost too strong for the medium roast drinker in me. The after taste was more dark roast flavor. However, an indulgent caramel flavor around the edges balanced it all out.
The dark roast taste was strong, but I still think it’s better than 90% of the flavored coffees that I’ve tasted. I think it’s a coffee that dark roast drinkers should have in the cabinet, when they have friends or family over that like flavored coffee.
Overall, the Starbucks Natural Fusions Caramel earned an above average 3.5 on the Daily Shot Of Coffee scale. The vanilla is still my favorite, but this one is worth tasting, especially if you like caramel.
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Category: Coffee Reviews
About the Author (Author Profile)
Mike Crimmins is the highly caffeinated blogger behind Daily Shot Of Coffee. Besides drinking way too much coffee, he's obsessed with the Yankees and getting dirty on his mountain bike.Subscribe
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I’ve never really been a big fan of caramel drinks, though I would like to give this a try, may be I will
It’s worth giving it a shot! Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Flavored coffees can be hit or miss for me. What I like to hear about Starbucks as you mention, is that they use natural, not artificial syrupy, flavoring. I had some rum coffee that used a syrup to give it the flavor and it was horrible. Also, it mays cleaning the grinder and the french press hard to clean out. The smell, and volatile oils linger forever!
That’s a great point. Using a syrup on the actual coffee beans sounds like a good idea to me, however, you’re right, I can’t imagine the kind of mess that it would leave my grinder.
since i am NOT a caramel person, i’ll accept your evaluation
and pass it onto one of my family who ‘LUVS’ the flavor.
she’s single. you guys ought to hook up.
i did purchase and used an entire new bag of the
Starbucks vanilla you reviewed after my girl hid hers from me.
the traits of it were very much aligned with what you
said to expect… your review was highly accurate.
i do agree from that one sample alone that the SB’s roast was
a bit darker than i expected and might have overpowered
the vanilla. on the whole, the Starbucks vanilla was on
a par with or better than others like Emerils Vanilla Bean BAM
which i’ve tried a few times when the family pressures me
to break out of my organic coffee forever mantra. his has a more
modest medium roast which also lets the flavor come through.
I’ll have to keep an eye out for the Emeril’s! Keep hope alive, don’t give up on the organic coffee forever!
Is it too sweet? I like caramel but not that much. Are there any other flavors for Starbucks Natural Fusions?
It’s not overly sweet, more just like the flavor of caramel.
Usually flavored coffee makers create aroma by spraying scents onto coffee beans. But Starbucks’ roasters actually ground botanicals in with the arabica beans to produce subtle flavors that don’t beat the real taste of coffee. For example, the vanilla coffee gives some taste of sarsaparilla.
I’ve been telling my friends that you can literally taste the difference in the methods of production.
I love caramel and I love Starbucks coffee so I thought this would be great. The sweetness in this coffee was too intense. It’s much more tolerable if I cut it with something else – I mixed about 2/3 Espresso Roast with 1/3 of the caramel and it was an interesting flavor but not something I would drink on a consistent basis. I wish I would have tried the vanilla instead.
That sounds like something that I’ll have to try.
I agree with you, I am a huge fan of both Starbucks coffee and caramel and the combo that was created here was a bit of a disappointment. The sweetness was a bit to strong for my liking. Thanks for sharing your suggestion.