Nescafe Original

I am very lucky to be staying in a serviced apartment at the moment and this means among other luxuries that I get complementary hot drinks left out for me, much like a hotel. There is a selection of coffees and a large number of sachets of Nescafe Original.

This coffee is available in lots of shapes and sizes of packaging, including glass jars, recyclable packs, huge tubs and of course sachets. The Nescafe branding is very recognisable with a rich velvety brown background and bold white writing. There is a lovely full bodied coffee cup picture surrounded by cocoa beans.

The coffee when out of the packaging is not the most appealing looking dry coffee, it is quite edgy looking granules that are rather large and clogged. The coffee smells nice and strong and quite bitter on the nose, I like strong coffees but prefer a rich and smooth smell and taste if I am being honest, but will infact drink most hot drinks!

I make my dried coffees by putting a generously heaped teaspoon of the stuff into a mug, add a dash of skimmed milk and then fill the mug with just off the boil water to the top. The Nescafe coffee is really dark both when dried and when the milk and water is added to it, which obviously shows its strength. The coffee dissolves well into the water and milk and you don't get dregs left in the bottom of your cup.

To taste again as with the look of the coffee it tastes quite strong, it is very awakening and hits you like a tonne of bricks, which is one of the reasons I drink coffee for that wake up moment. The taste is quite rich but I find it very harsh on my throat and perhaps too bitter and strong for me to enjoy and go back to too often. Even if I add more milk than I would normally, I can't get over the bitterness of this and tend to have it when there are no other options.

Overall this is an average coffee for me, it does its job and gives me a buzz, but I can't drink more than one cup of it a day, which us too low for my average coffee intake!

A bonus with this brand and type of coffee is that it is good value for money, currently costing £4 for a 200 gram jar. However it is not one of my favourite instant coffees at all and as such can only give 2 stars.