by Glynnis Hayward

Created on: June 09, 2008

If you hadn't already noticed, coffee comes in many forms as a quick trip to the local coffee shop will reveal. Apart from regular or decaf, you can have latte, frappe, mocha, espresso, cappuccino, and I'm sure there are others that I haven't mentioned. All of the above can be skinny, with cream, with a blend, or without any of these at all just that good old cup of coffee. The brew can be mild or strong, from Africa, Columbia, Sumatra or many other different parts of the world; it can be made in any number of different machines from the old office variety, with an orange rim to signify decaf, to a very sophisticated French press, done the European way.

But wait a minute. There is another kind of coffee much loved by many people in other parts of the world, and detested by even more. This is that very humble drink called instant coffee. I firmly think that to give this drink a fair assessment, one should really call it something else perhaps quicoffee. It's that word "instant" that does not allow for a fair trial. The jury should be dismissed for being prejudiced.

I relate this to my arrival in the USA thirty years ago. I came from a strictly tea-drinking environment where we warmed the pot first, paid homage to the present century by using tea bags instead of loose tea and placed the appropriate number of bags in the pot for its size, poured freshly boiling water into the pot, put the lid on and covered it with a tea cosy. (This looked rather like a woolen beanie.) Then it had to brew before you could pour it into the cup with the milk going in first. On my first visit into someone's home in California, I was offered tea. Sounded good. My choices were vast, from apple and peppermint to raspberry. I had never heard of such stuff. Tea was simply black tea. My astonishment was even greater when water was poured into a mug and zapped in the microwave. It was hot, not boiling, when removed and into this was placed a tea bag. This was it.

It took me some time to accept that this was even an acceptable drink, let alone tea. The way I overcame my gut reaction was to tell myself that it was a hot raspberry drink. If I wasn't expecting tea, I actually began to find this assortment of hot drinks very pleasant. But in no way would they ever be tea. That still has to be made the proper way to earn its title.

So I believe that to fairly assess instant coffee, we must change the thinking about it. It should be viewed as a hot, coffee-flavored drink. Strangely enough, there are many people who grow up drinking this, and prefer it to the much-loved brewed drinks for which we flock to Starbucks. These are the folks who have their favorite brand like Nescafe or its rival, Taster's Choice. Having grown up with an acquired taste for this hot drink, they often find anything else too bitter and too much trouble. These are the folk you will hear saying, "The smell of coffee is far better than its taste. I'll just stick with my Nescafe."

I rest my case. Our taste buds are trained to enjoy what we have grown up with what is familiar. They can be trained to enjoy different tastes, but there should be no confusion in nomenclature if we are to enjoy different flavors; coffee is coffee, tea is tea, hot raspberry drinks are hot raspberry drinks, and hot coffee-flavored drinks are just that.

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