Bones Coffee's Jacked-O-Lantern

There's a coolness in the air. Groaning ghosts are being carried along on the wind, their passing causing leaves to shrivel and drop from the trees. Halloween is coming, and here's another review of a seasonally appropriate coffee blend for you to drink and possibly offset that chill down your spine.

Ida Lupino is wondering is wondering if the jack-o-lantern is talking to her,
or if she's had so much pumpkin-spiced coffee she's hearing voices.

BONES COFFEE COMPANY: JACKED-O-LANTERN

The Jacked-o-Lantern blend is another offering from Bones Coffee with a great cartoon on the cover. It also attempts to capture an eternal seasonal favorite that sends young and old running to coffee shops and stands--the pumpkin-spiced drink. 

This review is based of coffee brewed from a 4-oz sample pack that I got when I ordered the Fall Favorites bundle from Bones. When you open the bag, you get a hint of what's to come--the spicy goodness wafts deliciously up into your nostrils. While the aroma as the coffee brews isn't particularly strong, that same delightful smell of spices is evident as you pour the coffee.

The bad news when it comes to the actual flavor is that here isn't much of a pumpkin taste in this blend. While this is a great tasting medium-roast blend that goes down smooth and hits the "spice" part of "pumpkin-spice" right on the head with strong allspice and nutmeg flavors, if you are looking for pumpkin, you won't find it here. 

The good news is that when I drank a cup with unsweetened almond milk and then one with sugar-free Italian Sweet Cream creamer, I was treated to taste sensations that put me in mind of a "dirty chai", something that used to be a favorite drink of mine at a (now, sadly, closed) indie coffee stand. Basically, a "dirty chai" is a chai latte with coffee added, and I used to get one of those a week, hot or iced, depending on my mood and the weather. So, in perhaps goes without saying, but I enjoyed the Jacked-O-Lantern blend very much with milk or creamer added.

Another bit of good news is that Jacked-O-Lantern holds up nicely as it cools, with its taste remaining steady. Whether I drank it straight or with almond milk or creamer, this blend was a smooth coffee treat with a spicy kick. At room temperature, the spiciness comes through even stronger when it's mixed with the Sweet Cream creamer. It's perfect for someone like me who often takes a while to finish off a cup of coffee.

Finally, and perhaps not surprisingly, this blend works brilliantly iced. The spicy flavors remain strong, and the coffee flavor is silky smooth when chilled. As before, the unsweetened almond milk and the sugar-free Italian Sweet Cream enhanced rather than subdued the spicy flavors, making this blend even tastier. What I still couldn't detect, though, was any hint of pumpkin flavor.

In a break from my normal protocol when drinking coffee for review rather than pure pleasure, I decided to try this blend with chocolate almond milk, to see how the spice would interact with chocolate flavor, The result was an extremely tasty spiced chocolate coffee drink that I recommend chocolate and coffee lovers should try. (I think it worked well hot, too, but I admit that I had reheat the last cup in the microwave to try it, so the result was suboptimal and even less consistent with the rest of the reviews that just adding the chocolate almond milk.)