TERROR

VIVA EXAM ON MONDAY VIVA EXAM ON MONDAY VIVA EXAM ON MONDAY VIVA EXAM ON MONDAY VIVA EXAM ON MONDAY

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

that is all.

“What all the fuss is about”

My Uncle Steve (also a doctor) suggested I post the abstract of my thesis so he can see “what all the fuss has been about!!” So, here you go, one abstract:

Spilling the Beans: Concepts of Quality in the Speciality Coffee Industry

The coffee industry is a vast, and very complex network spanning the globe, and as the second largest legally traded commodity in the world its production warrants considerable attention. The complicated production process involved from farm to coffee shop gives plenty of scope for value to be added to the commodity through skilled practices and quotidian knowledge; yet this expertise often does not translate into straightforward market economics. The ‘speciality’ coffee industry arose out of a crisis in the existing coffee markets, differentiating gourmet coffees from the conventional commodity, and in doing so, built ideas of quality into the market. However, this concept of quality is far from universal, it is inherently subjective and intangible. This research aims to investigate what is actually meant by ‘quality’, the relationships between the concepts of quality and skill in the speciality coffee industry, and in turn, how quality is generated through the coffee production process.

Just as there is no objective, agreed definition of ‘quality’, there is no globally meaningful definition of ‘speciality’ either: the speciality coffee industry is defined by what it is not, and it is everything deemed ‘not conventional’. This thesis is based on data collected in the form of a multi-site ethnography and involved fieldwork at ‘speciality’ coffee plantations in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and at roasting companies and coffee shops in the UK. The research suggests that producing high quality coffee is not restricted to the abilities of the farmers who grow the crop, but that the concept is cumulative process based on assessment, preference and various skills of actors throughout the commodity network. This study also therefore explores how the concept of quality translates across the industry, and whether or not coffee consumers actually demand this level of quality.

Keywords: Coffee, Quality, Speciality, Skill

The End Is Nigh!!!

Today I submitted my thesis!!!!!!!
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

It has been an epic four years and two months. The PhD thesis is complete after nearly a week of swearing at it trying to print the damn thing, (which I could only do when Miranda was asleep since she sat on the printer tearing up sheets of paper as they emerged from the machine….). I wasted an entire tree (nearly 1000 sheets of paper) due to a formatting fuck-up that was no fault of my own. And then when I submitted it, I was so excited I completely forgot the fact that it was supposed to have a DVD included in the back of it, so I had to run all the way back up the hill to the pub and collect the damn disk out of the bottom of the pushchair whilst Ol and Liz minded Miranda. DOH. Oh and the girl on the Graduate Research Office Reception Desk recognised me from going to Highworth school together ten or eleven years ago. Freaky.

So, in four years and two months, (including the six months I had “off” for maternity leave) I wrote 82,000 wordsof thesis (not including all the words written on this blog), which turned in to 334 pages, 52MB of PDF file and two copies of printed document both 3.2cm thick, £37.50 in express service binding. Ouch.

The four-year-two-month timescale has meant I have beaten Dr Brian May of Queen (36 years), Jo’s Dad, Dr Land (9 years) as far as I know, my uncle Steve, Dr Morton, and our friend Mike, (M Phillips, MPhil, currently 5 years and counting) .

I have a date for my Viva, which will be 24th January, and with any luck, I will be moving to Canada not long after. So, assuming I don’t have any major corrections or completely fail the whole thing, that will be The End. No more PhD. Wowee!

Handing the damn thing in comes as more of a relief than anything. The immense hassles I had with printing it kind of made its ending rather more bitter and frustrating than I’d hoped. It hasn’t really sunken in that something I’ve been working on  for so long – a book, and something far more than a book – is finally finished and over with. Maybe when the dull realisation that this part of my life is over really dawns on me, I will be more bereft, but for now, it is still a welcome relief. Much celebration has already occurred, meeting with felllow post-grad sufferers and those that have survived the experience and moved on. There was even Pollards Coffee Stout in the pub!! It was an omen, I think.

So, the Viva is in about 5 weeks time, and after that I/we are moving. The Canadian coffee saga has already begun over at The Regina Monologue Blog. Which leaves the question, should I end this blog here? It was supposed to be a research journal… that research has been completed, at least, I’ve done my bit of it for now…..

I think I will leave it open and see if anything exciting happens in the coffee world between now and my viva. Or official graduation or something,

TTFN and “see” you in Canada!
love,
Dr Coffee. (nearly).

Weak coffee is still profitable apparently

Why we’re still lapping up the lattes | Tim Dowling | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Rightfully pointing out that Starbucks coffee is weak in terms of caffeine – but then you are basically paying for the milk and the logo in there.

Turning the Ordinary into the Ubiquitous

I have been asked to write about Starbucks.

Oh this shall be fun!

This follows many conversations on Twitter both with local people who dare go in there, and also fellow coffee geeks. I am forever slagging off the place, despairing of my friends who go in there and refusing to name the place inside my cafe. But I am always asked WHY? What’s wrong with Starbucks?

Well, actually, nothing particularly obvious.

I read Joseph Michelli’s “The Starbucks Experience” a while ago. I was quite rude about it on here, and embarrassingly, he actually found this blog and responded. What I didn’t like about the book was just it’s gushing, unquestioning praise for the company. There was virtually no criticism at all in the entire book. Toe-curling.

Far more interesting is the fact that you can read at least two-thirds of the book without realising it is about a coffee shop. Michelli is an expert in business and marketing, and in this respect, you can’t fault Starbucks. They have ‘turned the ordinary into the extraordinary’ as Michelli puts it, or, to the cynic, (moi?) – convinced otherwise sensible people that parting with £3 for a cup of coffee is not only justifiable, it is a lifestyle, a fashion statement and a small luxury we can treat ourselves to in a socially acceptable manner. They have even cornered the market of non-coffee drinkers by building an empire based on serving huge milkshakes with a coffee theme, to people wary of the strong black stuff. “The lactification of coffee” as someone else says (“Cite your sources Bel!” “Ketchup, mayonnaise, and HP…” -get to the point…) has made for an undeniably successful business venture.

Anyway, declaring their coffee shops as ‘the third place’ – by which they mean, not at home, not at work but somewhere in between, and a social meeting place that is far more respectable than a pub – means they have managed to entice people in, even if they are not visiting for the coffee itself. Michelli writes about how the company tries to fit in with the local community and so on; a global brand trying to operate its individual branches on a local level. Starbucks has therefore ingratiated itself almost as a social ‘need’, I would suggest in the lack of other public meeting places. As a business model, you can’t fault it. Where did people ‘hang out’ or meet up before coffee shops? Teenagers have been inhabiting them since the 1950s espresso bars because they were refused entry to pubs, but otherwise I assume the equivalent would have been youth clubs or dancehalls or maybe just playgrounds or something. None of which really exist any more. Do we really have to replace them with a branded, corporate empire of identical shops? But I could just as easily argue, that without Starbucks paving the way and making coffee shops popular social spaces, the likes of my business and of smaller, excellent independent coffee shops would not exist. So, thank you Starbucks for getting the British to drink coffee. Now sod off so I can make it properly!!

Michelli also praises their customer service. I can only assume that things are different in the USA, because over here, the customer service is not terrible by any means, it’s just not particularly good or memorable. Serving customers is brand-specific; I encountered the same thing working at Caffe Nero. They train you how to serve, if not actually scripting it, then certainly suggesting things to say to your customer – the 6 service steps which all begin with S so that you remember them, and the ‘mystery customers’ sent by the area manager to check employees are doing it right. The effect is like talking to a robot, and from the opposite perspective, it gives the barista very little scope for injecting any personality or individuality into the transaction. I run a coffee shop, I serve the same range of drinks as Starbucks and Nero, I promote the place as a social meeting place and I have free wifi so people can bring laptops and work in here. But the BIG difference is, I get to be Me. It’s my business, it is very small and obviously independent of any chain branding, and so a huge proportion  of my success or failure depends on my own personality. In this sort of job and at this level of business development, I am still selling myself as much as I am selling coffee. That gives me the advantage of being unique, and it is not something that big brands can ever emulate.

I admit, I do not like the idea of social space being restricted to branded corporations, neither do I like the generic chain coffee shop feel. However, my biggest criticism of Starbucks is the coffee they actually serve you. There is no polite or academic way of saying this – Starbucks Coffee Is Terrible. This is partially a personal preference thing I know, and as mentioned earlier, Starbucks have been very good at persuading non-coffee drinkers to drink it by making coffee drinks that don’t actually taste of coffee. A Starbucks ‘venti’ mocha, for instance, is 614 calories if you have it with full fat milk, and comprises of 3oz of House Blend espresso, 2oz chocolate syrup, 15oz hot milk, topped with squirty cream and chocolate sprinkles, thus rendering the coffee pretty much obsolete, drowned in dairy and sugar. I am fairly sure that would set you back over £3 too.

Back to the ubiquity though: Starbucks’ house blend has to taste exactly the same in January in Darlington as it does in July in Detroit. It is part of the brand, it can’t from place to place or season to season. But coffee is incredibly variable. Stuff that grows in Costa Rica doesn’t taste the same year on year anyway, and coffee from Indonesia won’t taste the same at all. Using a blend of coffees helps keep the taste consistent to some extent, but Starbucks has a trick to make sure. They actually bake the coffee – roasting it slower at a lower temperature than it would normally require. This helps to bake out the variation in flavour, gets rid of the subtle nuances of individual batches of coffee, to form a bland, generic taste that can be reproduced consistently, year round on an enormous scale. It is also why Starbucks coffee is a.) burnt, b.) rarely served as a single espresso c.) cheap for the company and d.) so bland as to be inoffensive to the majority of latte drinkers. Ugh Ugh Ugh Ugh Ugh.

Starbucks have had a lot of muck slung at them in recent years. Starbucks always seems to be at the centre of the anti-globalisation protests, where the small minority of rioters smash its windows and the Daily Mail get lots of dramatic photos and condemn the violent thugs and miss the point entirely…but I disgree. It is usually targeted because to many, it is a symbol of corporate America, the faceless global monopoly (more or less). That and being charged so much for such bad coffee is sometimes enough to spark all sorts of angst. Actually, their ethics, or lack of them, are no different to the majority of very large companies. But that is not to say they are a highly moral, outstandingly responsible, considerate company, far from it!

In January 2010, Starbucks UK switched its House Blend coffee to Fairtrade. This received a lot of praise – at last, they are being ethical! Fair prices for the farmer! Harriet Lamb of the Fairtrade Foundation says she was delighted about the swap. However, cynics may have noticed the global price of coffee on the New York Commodity Exchange. In the past few years, the global commodity price has soared, and this year it reached at 35 year high of over $3 per pound, whilst the Fairtrade minimum has remained at $1.31 per pound. It was only very recently that the Fairtrade Foundation changed their regulations to state that coffee buyers must pay the Fairtrade rate OR the market rate, whichever is higher. Until that point, with careful negotiation (easy enough when the company is that big!) Starbucks could have switched to Fairtrade entirely because it was cheaper than buying on the open markets. The fact that being 100% Fairtrade just sounds so good and gives you kudos with the consumer is just a bonus.

So, unethical trading, terrible, burnt coffee, buckets of hot milkshake for rip off prices, robotic customer service, and the very fact that you are never more than ten minutes away from one – those are the reasons I am not a fan of Starbucks, dear reader. Please, if you love real coffee, check out your nearest independent place, support local businesses and don’t buy coffee themed milkshakes from people wearing those ominous green aprons. Please.

 

 

Knowledge-sharing?

I am still awaiting news on my Canadian visa, so my very hectic life continues over here for now! The PhD is soooooooo nearly complete, and Doctor Coffee’s Cafe is getting busier again after a very quiet summer. But as the threat of actually leaving it looms, I decided to train up some replacement voluntary baristas to give Jo a hand when she takes over the place.

To this end, the other day I held some Beginners’ Barista Classes. I posted the idea of facebook and got a lot of response very quickly, so much that I had to do two classes. It is not possible to fit more than four around my espresso machine! But people’s enthusiasm was very encouraging, and it seemed like everyone enjoyed it!

In my first class, I had Simon and Duncan, both of whom appreciate very strong coffee. I started off talking a bit about where coffee comes from, what an espresso actually is, what goes into the process of growing it and roasting it. I also talked about decaff coffee and the actual caffeine content of our drinks – and I think I surprised them a little. Much of the “strong” effects of espresso are psychological only, and come from the flavour and the heat rather than from the caffeine. Knowing this sort of stuff doesn’t really help you make better espresso, but I think it may help people appreciate what they are drinking a bit more. Also, I reckon you are more likely to remember how to do something, if you understand WHY you do it like that…

Anyway, apart from one pretty revolting under-extracted espresso, these two did extremely well. Simon took this photo for his Flickr set – thanks for letting me use it!

In the afternoon, I had four willing apprentices, Jane, Jim, Heather and Mark. This proved to be a bit of a squash! They made A LOT of practice espressos, tasting each others and their own – the most practical and memorable way of learning what makes a good one. If one was horrible, they had to be able to work out why it was horrible. I also had to try their efforts – I must’ve drunk around 30 odd shots throughout the day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually going through the techniques step by step felt very odd to me. I didn’t realise how little I think about it nowadays. Four years of daily practice means that the actions are almost automatic; I judge everything by eye and trying to explain what I was doing and how I was doing it was quite hard to get my head around!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second group learned very quickly too, but despite all that coffee, I was completely and utterly exhausted after talking non stop for about four hours!!! Still, lots of positive feedback from my trainees, requests for more practice with milk foaming, and I even convinced a non-espresso drinker that the pure stuff is actually pretty good! I really enjoyed the sessions too, indulging in my geekery and sharing my enthusiasms with a great bunch of people. There were calls for an intermediate class… watch this space!

Canadian Coffee

Good Canadian coffee has so far remained elusive. I ‘follow’ someone calling themselves “@coffeevancouver” on Twitter, and from his (or her) tweets, I assume he’s not guilty of this. The bit of Canada I have seen this week (a looooooooooong way from Vancouver, admittedly) has some unexpectedly bad coffee. ‘Third Wave’ coffee shops have not reached Saskatchewan just yet.

The Canadian staple is Tim Hortons. In fact, New Boss took me there on my first morning in Regina, to check out the competition. They had espresso coffees and also plenty of ‘brewed’ coffee. By brewed, they mean filtered, or ‘drip’ to Americans, and he recommended I had a small brewed because anything larger wasn’t stomachable. It wasn’t too bad, but then it wasn’t too good either. I have to admit, I didn’t take much notice of the espresso. What I was pleased to find was the lack of instant coffee in Regina! Even Mr Sub, opposite the new cafe, had vile but filtered coffee machines. Instant coffee was just Not Done. (I was sent in as a spy to Mr Sub, as New Boss had already made himself persona non grata there since he might possibly steal their trade. Gourmet blend was shitinamug, 100% Colombian was stale but passable)

Kave Haz, hopefully my new employer, aims to provide something completely different. They wanted to set up a European style coffee shop; New Boss’s wife is Hungarian (hence the name) and they have a Hungarian chef doing amazing pastries there. And they like my accent!! heh, Well someone’s got to I suppose. Unfortunately, a ‘European’ cafe apparently has to involve “Italian” coffee. This means, very dark roasted blends including robusta. Worse, it did not mean proper Gaggia espresso machines with which to make it. Perhaps understandably, New Boss bought simple-looking machines, bean-to-cups or “superautomatics” as the Canadians call them, because he does not know how to use a Gaggia, and he certainly couldn’t train other wannabe baristas how to use one. And if he did, he wouldn’t need me!! So I shouldn’t complain I guess. But I did, loudly.

What was more interesting was that New Boss certainly wasn’t alone in his insistance on super-automatics. I went to as many coffee shops as I could to check out the competition, and only found ONE which had a proper manual Gaggia. Their coffee was ok (I had it iced because that day was stonkingly hot) but nothing spectacular. But all the rest had these bean-to-cup machines, Tim Hortons, Starbucks and all the independents I came across as well. I tried to explain that virtually everywhere, certainly the vast majority of independent places as well as Costa and Caffe Nero in the UK all use proper Gaggias, but this was an alien concept apparently. I hope the penny dropped when the maintenance guy from the bean-to-cup machine company came round saying he’d just had to fix an identical machine at MacDonalds down the road. With one of those machines, you can only ever do MacDonalds coffee. The barista does get enough control over the espresso, too many of the variables are automated. The advantage is, they prevent against human error, which is great when you’re starting out, and do not have trained staf. The disadvantage is, you can never get outstanding coffee – that requires human skill.

You never know, by the time I get out there to start work (hopefully, in a few months time) New Boss may have seen the light and installed me a nice big shiny Nuova Simonelli

That awkward moment when your ambitions actually happen….

An update on Bel’s world of coffee is needed, rather drastically. Fortunately I have plenty of time to write, since I am currently on a plane, headed to Chicago and then on to Regina, Saskatchewan….

Contrary to my previous post, things have not been going brilliantly at Doctor Coffee’s Cafe. A combination of things, really: a few of our regular customers realising they were chronically broke, a longish period of time with nothing on at the theatre during the week, and of course, chaotic weather where when it’s hot, we can’t tempt people with hot drinks, and when it’s chucking it down with rain, no one ventures out and past our cafe. Nothing serious or permenant, but it does make me realise how much we rely on the theatre and a small group of regulars for the majority of our trade. This in itself is not sustainable. It is also exhausting and frustrating. I don’t enjoy it being that quiet as both Miranda and I get very bored, and worse, putting in such long hours and so much work for so little return is very disheartening. Jo and I had The Conversation – as in, how long can we last like this? What happens if it doesn’t pick up? I really couldn’t answer – It HAS to work out. We’re in the lease now, and I’ve invested so so much in it, not just money that it would be heartbreaking to fold. I do really believe it has potential, that we will get there eventually, and like I said in the previous post, I do try and remind myself and Jo that we are doing very well indeed for a fledgling business, with no investment, in the middle of a recession and in Darlington. But then, I can’t live off thin air indefinitely.

It is the last part, the ‘in Darlington’ bit that really bugs me. I really do not like this town, and Doctor Coffee’s was very much a result of not being able to find any other job in Darlington. I wanted to build something that would make me like the place, a reason to stay put. Our location is not great even ignoring the wider issues with the town itself – we are not even inside the “town centre” according to the council – but then, premises in the town centre were prohibitively expensive in comparison. I always have this niggling doubt in the back of my mind: “maybe this would be easier in another town, maybe we’d be busier somewhere else”. Basically, despite my best efforts, there is just no gourmet coffee market round here!!

So anyway, with my head full of thoughts like this, I came home after a soul-destroyingly quiet, rain soaked day in an utterly foul mood and dabbled in a bit of escapism and fantasy. I google searched for “Coffee Jobs in Canada”, found a jobs listing site called Indeed.ca, and fired off a few applications and CVs, almost indiscriminately (I have a nasty feeling I sent one to Tim Hortons, but I know I drew the line at Starbucks!) I really was just messing about, I did not expect anyone to even read the applications let alone take me seriously.

People have this unnerving habit of taking me seriously.

The next day, I got a 3 word email: “do you skype?” I replied and said I could do, and lo and behold I got a call from Ken at Kave Haz cafe, in Regina, Saskatchewan. Kave Haz is a brand new, “European-style” coffee shop, and Ken needs a manager for the place. Strangely, he has had very, very few applications from local Canadians. Better yet, he had the vague plan of the manager eventually taking over the place entirely once the business is established. This is GOOD. I know I could do that job happily – hell, I AM doing that job already but with less staff! The PhD makes me somewhat unique which will help a great deal with Canadian Immigration, and the process is speeded up by actually having an offer of employment.
Two interweb phone calls later, and I have a verbal job offer.

This all sounds perfect. Too perfect?

I have no idea who this guy is. I also have no clue what Regina is like. It is right, right in the middle of the big empty flat bit in the middle. Prairies. Corn. Farms. Not much else. Extremes of temperature, and a very limited write-up in Lonely Planet! Regina has a huge Mountie training centre, apparently, and quite a lot of beer. The city is huge in terms of geography (by my standards at least) but only has twice the population of Darlington, yet it’s the provincial capital! It looks pretty on Google Earth, but then, so does Borough Rd in Darlington. Ken himself even asked “why would you want to come to Regina?” I also have concerns about why there were so few Canadian applicants for this job. Do they know something I don’t? Or perhaps the people of Saskatchewan have even less interest in coffee than people in Darlo?

Jo and I had to have another Inevitable Conversation: what happens to Doctor Coffee’s if I do take the job? I feel utterly awful about abandoning Jo – either to take the whole thing on, on her own, (which she wants to but it will be so much work that she didn’t sign up for!) or, to sell the lease and have to give up on all her own plans for the place. I’ve also put heart and soul in to it, and I’m not entirely sure I want to jack it all in so soon anyway.

So, as yet, no decisions have been made, although EXCITEMENT is plentiful. I am heading out there for a week to meet Ken properly, check out the cafe and see if I could imagine myself – and Carl and Miranda – actually living in Regina. I will have to make a decision from there. Still, plenty of time to blog, so expect updates, dear readers!

Living the dream?

I feel like it is time for a sort of personal update. This week (I think) I’ve finished editing my methodology chapter. I’m currently going through and editing each and every little bit of the thesis and completely rewriting some bits of it. It takes HOURS because it is nothing like as easy as writing from scratch where you can get into a flow. I loathed methodology the first time round, editing it, and adding more references in, as always, is just TEDIUM epitomised. But anyway, I’ve done it as best I can, emailed it through to my supervisor and now I have a few days to mess about with blogs before meeting him to be told it needs yet more citations. Groan.

I can’t really believe I’ve not mentioned the changes to the cafe yet. As per usual, I have been exhaustingly busy with the business, (not helped by the constant battle with the local council!) and the PhD and Miranda, and haven’t had time to blog without feeling guilty about neglecting something else. Anyway, a few months back, Jo F stopped using the cafe for her burlesque. She’s still performing with her Kitty Katz and Back Alley Boys groups, but for many reasons she’s not taking on any new classes, which means she has little need of the cafe space. In a way, this is sad since we started this as a group of three and its a shame it didn’t work out for her. It’s also a bit complicated regarding the lease and so on. However, and this is in no way a reflection on Jo, it is kind of a relief from my point of view.

The Burlesque aspect never quite sat right with me. I’ve nothing against it, but it was just not my thing. I felt like I had to dress up and play a role in there since we were attempting to be ‘vintage’ style to incorporate the burlesque, and I just can’t pull off that look!! Also, and more significantly, it was a very difficult concept to explain to people. I am not exactly sure what people expected of us anyway. There were plenty of uptight prudes who thought we were a den of iniquity or a strip joint or something – typically, these people never actually came in to check because it is very hard to look like a sleazy strip club with Miranda’s multi coloured lego bricks and knitted tea set all over the floor! I got the impression a lot of our customers just ignored the name or didn’t think through the spelling – Afternoon Tease. The cafe is in Tees-side and we sell a range of teas… that was the pun, but it may have been too subtle for some!!

So, in Jo F’s absence, we changed the name. We are now Doctor Coffee’s Cafe again! This makes me very happy. We had new signs done, our woman in the coffee cup on the window, who we named Fanny, is still there but she now sports a  graduate mortar board donned at a rakish angle, with ‘Doctor Coffee’s Cafe,’ ‘Tea Room’, ‘Coffee Shop’ and ‘Arts Cafe’ done in gold lettering on a deep teal backdrop, in an art deco style font chosen by Jo L. It looks fantastic and I am very proud of it!

It really feels like MINE now, and I am a lot comfier and more confident about the whole enterprise. I can really geek-out about coffee, and concentrate on making it into a friendly quality-focussed shrine to eccentricity. Giving the place a new name has renewed my enthusiasm immensely.

We hit our 6th month anniversary the other day. It has been a helluva half-year, I have learnt so much, but still find it hard to comprehend that I’ve actually achieved my ambition – to have my own coffee shop. And it’s working. It is INCREDIBLY hard work and very stressful, even without the added pressures of baby and university, but it is getting there. We have made a small profit consistently since March, which in the current economic climate, and in the grim North East, I think is exceptionally good. I am really proud of us all!!

Check out the new website: www.doctor-coffees-cafe.co.uk!

Kenco Millicano

Ok folks, for the sake of balance, I am trying Kenco Millicano coffee. I had already, erm, voiced my somewhat negative opinion of this stuff on Facebook, and they challenged me to actually try it. So in the interests of fairness and the fact that it was on offer in the supermarket, here goes.

The concept of Kenco Millicano is that it supposedly contains ground up, real coffee beans mixed in to the instant granules:
“‘Wholebean Instant coffee’; a clever combination of instant coffee and finely milled wholebeans. It’s the closest thing to ‘proper’ coffee in an instant. “
As I’ve pointed out previously – most notably when Nescafe tried this with their raw coffee Green Blend – real coffee, whether roasted or green, is NOT naturally soluble. There is a reason why you have to filter it or use an espresso machine! So, if Kenco really have put real grounds into their instant coffee, I ought to get some sort of gritty residue at the bottom of my cup. Lovely, just what I look out for in a good coffee.

It smells awful. The problem with studying coffee and running a coffee shop, is that the more great coffee I get to try, the less I am able to tolerate crap. I did used to drink instant coffee – there you go, I admitted it. To me, Kenco Millicano smells like every other instant coffee – stale, almost like mildew, and at best, like coffee scented candles, that artificially sweet smell you get in interior design shops next to the bath bombs. Anyway, Millicano doesn’t actually smell that sweet, but it definitely does not smell like the real thing.

I hesitantly poured boiling water on to it. The smell gets worse, and then something very odd happens. Somehow, they’ve managed to generate artificial crema! I sincerely doubt that really is the coffee oils rising to the surface. Even if it really does have real coffee grounds in this mix, you don’t often get crema on the top of filter coffee anyway! More worryingly still, the crema was a deep, reddish brown, mahogany coloured. not the golden caramel colour it should be.

It tastes absolutely vile. Stale sawdust, mouldy, and bitter, with an acrid aftertaste like the taste of paracetamol when you don’t gulp the tablets with water. It is roughly akin to every other instant coffee I’ve tried recently – possibly worse than Nescafe Green Blend, better than the South African Frisco but not by much!!

I couldn’t get to the bottom of the cup drinking this black, so I’ve added sugar. At least the paracetamol aftertaste has gone.

Miranda has just smelled it and screwed her little face up!!!

Glop. Ok, over with. And yes, true to their word, there is some sort of unpalatable, grainy sludge at the bottom of my cup. This, I hope, is the real coffee grounds. I feel sorry for them, that truly was a fate worse than death for those beans.

Kenco – just… WHY? Why muck about with perfectly good coffee? Good coffee is worth waiting for, and making filter coffee is hardly much more hassle than boiling a kettle anyway, is it? NO NEED!!