‘All I could smell was fertiliser’: the best (and worst) supermarket instant coffee, tasted and rated

Our coffee snob spills the beans on which granules hint at chocolate and caramel, and which leave a bitter note • Everything you need to make great coffee I’m a coffee snob with my own grinder, but I found the haptic thwack, whack and crack of opening the lid and film on a jar of instant coffee strangely invigorating, and rather nostalgic. When I took a deep sniff, however, disaster: all I could smell was fertiliser!

Instant coffee is brewed at scorching temperatures, then either freeze-dried in a vacuum or spray-dried using hot air. This industrial process strips away many of the volatile flavour compounds and bright aromas that make fresh coffee smell so good. This gives it an earthier, muskier and more bitter flavour profile, though, thankfully, with a little alchemy and hot water, those more familiar coffee aromas and flavours returned, with notes of chicory, bitter chocolate and burnt sugar. Almost all of these products have a similar industrial imprint, uniform granules and a one-dimensional flavour profile, so they’re ultimately more a…