Mellow Bird's Coffee (100g)

Product Information

Delivers a delicate balanced flavour with red fruits and caramel notes, although the aftertaste is a bit flat.

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! A posh-looking jar but the coffee tastes sadly singed and dusty. Classic parents’ evening coffee – complete with a whiff of school caretaker’s cupboard. 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 dried granules have a brighter smell than some but the coffee is murky in colour and very weak in flavour. 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.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 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. 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'. The coffee in the jar smells like Crunchie bars. The drink delivers a classic instant-coffee taste, mellow, with a caramel length. Powder rather than granules, and delivers some bitter grip but very little else. Wouldn’t recommend.

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.Brews to a reddish colour and a very rich, Italian-style flavour with a slightly treacly intensity. Has a great length, if you like that flavour.

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”. You’re right, latte lovers, instant doesn’t taste the same as coffee brewed from beans. But for some of us, it’s a flavour we prefer to fresh ground coffee. For others it’s simply a fast and comfortingly familiar caffeine fix, as it has just as much caffeine as brewed coffee and probably more than a shot of hipster espresso. The best way to counter coffee snobs is to point out that it’s just a different drink altogether. 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. TV ads will air on Channel 4 on university campuses via the student-targeted Freewire TV service before potentially being rolled out nationwide. REWIND 40 YEARS: there are hardly any coffee shops on the high street and serving-up a coffee to a visitor meant instant coffee out of a jar. Mellow Bird’s coffee was heavily advertised during the 70s and 80s. One of their most memorable adverts involved a lady swiftly throwing her foul tasting cup of coffee into a plant pot.It helps to know what you’re buying. There are, broadly, two different kinds of instant coffee: spray-dried (cheaper) and freeze-dried (more expensive). Both start the same way: by coarsely grinding beans, then infusing them to make a strong coffee. Fairtrade. Caramel notes and a mild flavour. Adding milk makes it a bit bland, however, and the aftertaste is musty. 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.