Maxwell House Cappuccino

Bland. There's coffee in this? Waste of time really.


Date: March 2015  Score: 1/10


Bought it again - it's only 99p for a box of 8 sachets, so worth another try I think. But it is more latte than cappuccino - it's very milky with very little coffee flavour. Compared to a latte it's got coffee taste, but compared to a regular cappuccino it doesn't. It has some starchy thickener in it like cornflower to give it body (or "thick 'n' milky froth" as they say), but that just adds to the general blandness of it all.

Date: Oct 2016  Score: 2/10

Creamy instant coffees

CafeDirect Rich Roast

A blend of Latin American and African beans dark roasted to level 5. There's a lack of character here. There's nothing interesting or exciting, but it's a drinkable coffee. Between this and the Starbucks Caffe Verona, I prefer the Verona as it was smoother and more flavoursome. This one is similar, but is a little crude, has too much bitterness for my taste, and is fairly dull.

Cafedirect is a Scottish based coffee and tea distribution organisation that buys direct from growers, reinvests in growers, and has a majority of growers as shareholders. It was formed in 1989.


Score: 4       Date: March 2015

Fudge, burnt toffee, creamy toffee, burnt toast, dark chocolate. It's certainly a rich flavour, pushing at the edges of aggressive, but holding back so that it is a drinkable and reasonably smooth coffee.  Strength 5 means that it is really dark. At the reduced price I find it acceptable, but I wouldn't pay the full price for this, which is usually around £3.50 for 227g.


Score: 5     Date:  June  2016

Cafedirect

Coffee roasts

Gregg's Mocha

March, 2015

Greggs have a deal where you get a coffee and  a bake for £2. Normally a coffee by itself is £1.70, or a cheese and onion pasty (gorgeous!) £1.20, so it's worth going for it.

This is the first time I've had a coffee at Greggs. I had the Mocha, and enjoyed it. It's not really a coffee, but a milky chocolate drink with some coffee flavouring, but it was fun, and fresher and creamier than the instant coffees that I have been trying lately. I'd be quite happy to have this again.

Just forget the "coffee" part and think of it as a milky chocolate drink.

4/10


April, 2015

Tried the Mocha again, but didn't enjoy it so much. It all tasted sort of artificial and chemical and odd.  It was drinkable, but not as much fun as the first time.

2/10

Starbucks Caffe Verona

This is a deep dark and tangy coffee. Little sharp peaks of burnt toast. There's a bitter cocoa flavour underlying it all the way through. I am getting into dark roasts, and they can be bought very cheaply as companies can use the cheapest reject beans and roast them very dark where their character doesn't matter, so there doesn't appear to be much gained from paying the higher prices for a Starbucks brand, but this has an attractive name, and you get a free Tall Latte from Starbucks when you take in the empty packet. It's not without some appeal, but on the whole the powdery bitterness doesn't really seduce me. I'd be interested to try this on a blind taste test, as I suspect I could pull it out from other very dark roasts due to the sharp peaks. This blend was originally composed in 1975 for a Seattle restaurant, Jake O’Shaunessey’s, as a mix of  80% Starbuck's Yukon blend with 20% Italian Roast. The Yukon blend had been created in 1971 for the captain of a fishing vessel as a blend of Latin America and Sumatra beans. The blend for Jake's restaurant was private, but customers who had drunk it, and knew Starbucks supplied the restaurant, were asking Starbucks for it under the name "Jake's blend", so servers would give them beans which were the same blend, but under the name 80/20 Blend. When Starbucks opened their own chain of coffee shops, they launched the blend under the name Caffee Verona.

An acceptable dark roast coffee, though unlikely to become one of my favourites, despite the colourful history.


5/10

Coffee roasts

Twinings Fresh & Fruity Echinacea & Raspberry

Echinacea is commonly used as a cold cure; while there appears to be little evidence that it prevents or cures colds, it does seem to relieve the symptoms by lowering inflammation. The plant is part of the daisy family, and various parts of it are used. It is the root that is used here, and the flavour is mild licorice, earthy parsnip, very soft and pleasant, and then balance by the mild sweetness of raspberry - though the raspberry flavour tends to get lost under the weight of the echinacea root. It's a very pleasant and relaxing drink. I like the licorice flavour, and may explore this plant further.

Score: 6

***

Twinings