Instant cofe rating list (mostly FR/NL)

Hélène

desultory that sounds really expensive!

desultory

Hélène It is, but sometimes even the really spendy options get rather tempting for various reasons. Given some of the stuff that you can do with them, including making bespoke instant coffee, I'm still tempted to get one even with the cost.

lucihaj

how about store brands? I'm fairly sure they're bad since all instant cofe in france is bad but I wonder just how bad they are compared to the others. I have yet to try the carrefour instant cofe, i see it every time i go to the carrefour city near my workplace but never think of picking it up lol

Hélène

lucihaj I've never seen any store brand coffee; I guess I should try Carrefour's if they have some?

toast

lucihaj I've yet to try any store brand stuff. Next time I go to a carrefour city I'll get one and let you know!

lucihaj

Hélène It seems there's a whole bunch of them:

Intense, the one I spotted at Carrefour City originally
Decaf
Simpl "arôme riche" (Simpl being carrefour's low cost brand, previously known as carrefour discount)
Simpl corsé
Organic edition
Organic espresso
Absolute unit

Franprix lists this decaf, they have some chicory that they dub instant cofe which I think is a crime

Auchan has level 4 and level 8 cofe as well as two organic options

Intermarché has qualité filtre, régal force et tradition, a decaf, and a discount option

Hélène

lucihaj you just outed yourself as a parisian, you mentioned Franprix

lucihaj

Hélène I am hundreds of km away from Paris and there is a Franprix 100 meters away from me 😛

「 Fristi 」

Hélène true, sadly enough, I never got how Nestlé somehow got away with a lot of the completely bonkers shit they do (and still are doing). Governments should be literally waging a military war on that company.

On the topic of not having enough time to make coffee: does grinding fresh coffee really take that much time? I don't suppose you could look into pre-ground coffee, as that is what I use :thonk: I'd even say my drip coffee machine is particularly fast, probably as fast as waiting for a kettle to boil water for instant coffee. Alternatively if you don't care for a drip machine, regular pour-over is probably only slightly slower than instant coffee.

toast

「 Fristi 」 the concern is more with effort and cleanup.
We don't really like pour-over taste-wise, french press is a pain to clean, etc...

「 Fristi 」

toast I see, fair enough.

desultory

toast Have you tried "K-cup" type brewers? Are they, not to mention the pods, even available there?

Hélène

lucihaj then you live in Lyon.....

lucihaj

Hélène Close enough, that's an hour away from here by train and I wanna go there again in september

Tricky

try Amigo, it's so bad you'll never complain about instant cofe again

toast

desultory I've tried one in Canada, it was pretty disgusting for my palate.
And yes, it's all available here, but I'm not exactly tempted ^^;;
Less convenient than instant, and not that much better (in the best of cases).

lucihaj

So I bought this one yesterday, the cheapest Carrefour cofe, and as expected it has the lowest quality.

It says 1 to 2 teaspoons for 10 cL, but i have a big mug. I tried 2 teaspoons in my mug and it tasted like water, so I emptied the mug (gotta test properly, no reheating the cofe in the microwave) and tried again with 4 teaspoons. It tasted incredibly bitter. This might just be the most bitter cofe I ever had. I added a double dose of sucralose and it showed barely any improvement to the taste. I added about 5cL of milk and it removed enough bitterness for me to get the actual taste and not just 100% bitterness, and it tastes awful. Just as expected from super low cost cofe!

So I guess you can add this to the list @Hélène:

Simpl Café soluble arôme riche (Carrefour, France/Belgium/Netherlands/Spain): bitterness with a side of terrible cofe

I would say that it goes at the very bottom of the list. It's even worse than Maxwell House, having tried that one too. I had managed to tone down Maxwell House's acidity with milk and sucralose enough to drink it, but I just can't drink this one.

I know what to drink if I want to stop drinking cofe forever. I'll go get some tea, I can't even deal with my usual morning cofe after this. I hope you enjoyed my sacrifice in the name of cofe rating

mycelium

lucihaj I know what to drink if I want to stop drinking cofe forever

I was used to drinking a lot of cofe, (6-8 expressi a day) but not finding one to my taste and seeing the budget it can be, I simply switched to green tea a few weeks ago. So far, no regrets.
I also quit cofe for about a year, ~2022-04 → ~2023-04, that was fine actually.

toast

mycelium
I physically can't quit coffee because of health reasons.
No joke.
I have a coffee prescription.
(and also a tea allergy)

「 Fristi 」

toast

(and also a tea allergy)

that sucks, tea is blessed and all humankind should be able to enjoy it.
(just like a good cup of coffee)

meanwhile I switched to decaf because the risk that any old regular cup of coffee is gonna fuck me up, seems to have gotten very real with time. But oddly enough not all coffee does that. But Douwe Egberts does, fuck that brand. Oh well. I got good decaf, works for me.

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