I just love it when people get snotty about coffee. As if coffee was something that has the potential to taste good. Wake up - the best coffee on the planet tastes like dirt. Bitter dirt. That’s why people drown it in creme and sugar and mocha and vanilla and whatever the hell they can get their hands on to cover up its fundamental foulness. The people who like it black are the same masochists who take cold showers and sleep on yoga mats and and talk about feeling refreshed after their three hour workouts. Instant coffee is different - but it sure as hell isn’t any worse (what could be?) - than the sludge emanating from gourmet percolaters.
I refused to drink instant coffee in the states, but coming here, there is a brand of instant coffee that is really quite good. It’s not quite as good as fresh brewed coffee, but it’s close enough that I don’t usually bother with breaking out the coffeemaker.
Just because you don’t think something tastes good, uglybeech, doesn’t mean everyone thinks it tastes like crap yet drinks it anyway. I like coffee, black, with cream and sugar, whichever way, I like it. I can totally respect the fact that you don’t like it though.
I wonder if the lack of demand for instant coffee in the USA translates to a generally lower standard of product being commonly available; Aside from Nescafe, what brands and varities are typically avalable?
You’re crazy.
Oh and I love drinking coffee. I just admit that objectively it tastes like crap. Hearken back to the first time you had coffee - if you can tell me that you said to yourself…“mmm…delish…” then I stand corrected. Coffee tastes like crap to everyone but the odd crazy person (oops). But to almost everybody coffee is an acquired taste. And acquired tastes are those things that objectively suck ass, but which we force ourselves to tolerate and even learn to enjoy primarily because we like whatever mind altering effects they offer, or because we’ve been told the cool people like them. Among acquired tastes are most tobacco products (essence of burning chemical plant), most alcoholic beverages (yummy like kerosene) and COFFEE (watered down bitter dirt) – which sucks whether it’s brewed or instant. Instant’s more convenient.
Instant coffee has a long shelf life, and does not require any fancy tools to make. I’m sure its popular in the UK because they are generally a tea drinking nation, and IC’s preparation is nearly identical to tea.
Granted, a single cup cone filter is not all that “fancy” but it does exactly one thing, and takes up unnecessary space if you don’t drink coffee often. Plus the ground coffee you store will degrade over time in a way that instant coffee won’t.
IC is totally no muss, no fuss, it’s a bummer that it never tastes quite as good as fresh brewed.
I honestly did love coffee the first time I tried it. It wasn’t black - it had cream in it, but it wasn’t sweetened either. I was 15 when I first tried it. I used to make it every morning for my parents, so one day I figured I’d see what all the fuss was about. And to me, it was great.
Funny, I drank coffee without sugar for years, and didn’t like sweetened coffee. Now I don’t drink it without sugar.
I just sent this to my daughter who works at Nespresso.
I’m a total coffee head. In the Army, when I was in town it was always Starbuck’s, SBC or Tulley’s in the huge hot-pink Thermos travel mug sitting on the hump in my Hummer. (My Batallion Commander hated that mug.) In the field it was either gourmet coffee in a percolator pot over a camp stove (which was sometimes used to bribe guard duty from a Bradley team) when we weren’t on a mission; or instant coffee straight from the package when I needed my hit but couldn’t cook up for tactical reasons. It’s all good. You haven’t lived until you’ve tossed 4 servings of instant Folger’s into your mouth and washed it down with a swig of stale 100(f) water in the middle of the desert at sunset. Sometimes, life is truly sweet.