Mellow Bird's Coffee (100g)

Product Information

The imaginary caller. After taking a mouthful of the poisonous-like coffee, pull out your mobile and start talking: “Ohh… right… that sounds serious… I’m on my way!” Drop the coffee and dash out the front door to the imaginary emergency! Some nice acidity and a rich fruitiness; the end is a very dark Italian-style flavour. You wouldn’t mistake this for freshly ground coffee but it’s not bad. The other reason for the bitterness is the type of beans. Most instant is made from robusta beans, a cheaper variety with an earthy flavour, while more expensive arabica, even when lower grade, tends to have a brighter, sharp fruitiness. You need 3-4kg of green coffee beans to make 1kg instant coffee. But the price of 1kg instant coffee isn’t as much as 3-4kg coffee beans”. No surprise then, says Little, that “the manufacturers who dominate instant coffee aren’t using the same quality of coffee that you’d put in your cafetière”. An Italian-roast style, but with no over-roast “burnt” flavours, this is clean flavoured with some dark caramel length. Similar to Gold Blend but less bitter.

Made with robusta and arabica beans. A mildly astringent smell to the granules, and the hot drink is flat-tasting, like an office waiting room. A bright gold colour but singed aftertaste. Traditional disposal techniques. Being subtle is sometimes best, so swiftly and casually pouring the coffee into that plant pot is a good option. Other trusted techniques that have proved successful over the years are secretly pouring down the sink or into the dog bowl. And wow, what a difference. While the various grades, granules, arabica beans, robusta beans, mellow and rich roasts all had distinct characters, there were stark differences between the individual coffees themselves. The best were balanced and satisfying, the worst plain rough, often with a distinctly burnt taste.The coffee in the jar smells like Crunchie bars. The drink delivers a classic instant-coffee taste, mellow, with a caramel length. The granules smell of boiled-over milk (that’s the caramel note); the coffee brews dark, but the slight bitterness is balanced out by milk. Not much length of flavour though. So far, so simple: freeze-dried coffee is more expensive but probably tastes better. But to find out more, I talked to Will Little of Little’s Coffee, who make high-end instant coffee – the flavoured ones are available in Sainsbury’s, but for the unflavoured single origin instant coffees you’ll need to head to Ocado or direct at wearelittles.com. At around a fiver per 100g it is way out of the thrifty zone, but I know at least one restaurant critic who swears by it. TV ads will air on Channel 4 on university campuses via the student-targeted Freewire TV service before potentially being rolled out nationwide. Delivers powerful, fruity acidity but I’m not getting the caramel and chocolate notes it advertises. Takes milk nicely, which does give it more of a chocolatey quality. No balancing bitterness but it’s not at all burnt and the fruitiness really lingers.

Of course, it may not be just the flavour that leaves a bitter taste. The coffee industry is notorious for its exploitation of farmers, workers and the environment, and few of the coffees I tried had any kind of certification. Rainforest Alliance, a certification that’s not highly rated by industry watchdog ethicalconsumer.org, was the most used, but props to Waitrose as the only supermarket own-brand coffee I tried with Fairtrade status. Put to the test The brand has not been actively marketed since the 80s and early 90s, when ads featured the straplines 'For Mellow moments', 'Mellow roasted for more flavour' and 'Mellow Bird's will make you smile'. Brutal response. Spit or spew it out on the floor! Screw-up your face and yell out “ That’s disgusting!” then storm out the house. With some trepidation I brewed up 23 different instant coffees as directed on the jars, which was universally 1 tsp (sometimes 1-2 tsp) to a cup or mug of just off-boiling water. I used 200ml of 95C, and set to sipping.

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Then there is the extraction, as coffee experts call the brewing of the coffee. Coffee we make at home is infused for a short amount of time, so that only the nicest flavours are drawn out. Leave it too long and it becomes murky and acrid. But to make instant coffee at the price we want to pay, manufacturers may need to get every scrap of flavour out of the beans, meaning that it’s brewed for longer and can develop astringent or muddy tastes. That bitter note means instant coffee is often better drunk with milk. According to Little, the reason that most instant coffee doesn’t taste as refined and complex as freshly ground is about more than the process – it’s the quality of beans too. per cent arabica coffee with a little bit of bright acidity and caramel notes. A bit weak but the only one that could be mistaken for filter coffee. Not cheap, but better than pricier premium brands. Delivers a delicate balanced flavour with red fruits and caramel notes, although the aftertaste is a bit flat.