Instant Coffee. Is it an offence now?

[CrazyBoo]

...or I would have thought so this morning in the staff tea room. There I am, making my coffee, when in sashays a female colleague i barely know. "Oh! You're not drinking THAT are you?" she sneers, making hers with the machine that produces coffee that tastes extremely strong for me like monkey shit mixed with diesel oil.

So, my question is, is instant coffee a BAD THING now? Do you drink it? Has anyone commented on your caffiene intake preferences in this pretentious twatty way?

She's being a coffee snob. I loathe proper coffee - far too strong for me and gives me palpitations. Much prefer instant :)

All these new coffee machines and pods are like the Emperor's New Clothes to me.

Instant coffee varies widely in taste and cost. I suspect that many of the people who don't like it have only really tried the cheaper brands.

Plus, whatever your taste, she was being rude!

I'll always go for instant coffee over tea if someone else is making it. I love tea but not many people make it as strong as I like and I can drink any kind of coffee happily but badly made tea is awful.

Wow this has really opened my eyes! I will have to lick away the instant and only offer fresh coffee from now on! Maybe the few of us should start a franchise of underground, cheap instant coffee shops... We could serve greggs sausage rolls with it.?

I like instant coffee, like the others who find real coffee too strong. I do like a latte in a coffee shop, but only in a few places have I had a real coffee I would prefer over instant. A pub near me does a lovely one and I do like that.

I won't drink instant. I hate it. But I wouldn't criticise a colleague for drinking it. Or not aloud, anyway.

I drink espresso. In quite large quantities.

Funnily enough in Italy were there is no tea culture guests are always surprised at seeing that we use tea bags in a mug to make a cup of tea. Those who drink tea are all about theloose leaf tea. Tea sshops that sell loose tea are popping up ad well.

I prefer (decent) instant coffee because:

The other ground / filter stuff or whatever the fuck it is tastes wrong to me. Too strong maybe. Gives me a headache.

Those bloody coffee machines seem to take 10 minutes to make one lousy cup of coffee and getting stuck in a queue for one of those is just a waste of good earth minutes.

No-one else's business what you drink, or why.

I love cafetiere/coffee machine coffee. Instant makes me feel sick (literally - so does Coke and any sweet fizzy drink. Strangely beer doesn't have that effect...). I don't like tea, though can drink it black if in places where you can't rely on water that hasn't been boiled. Though would still prefer boiled water with a slice of lemon, assuming the lemon had been washed in boiled water... sometimes black tea is the easiest

Depending on where I am I might ask if offered coffee whether it is instant or not, or may just ask for (tap) water instead to avoid giving offense.

All based on personal preference, not image.

In fact, I tend to get offered tea as I'm English but living overseas, and people associate the English with tea-drinking. That's more a topic of conversation than what sort of coffee I do/don't drink.

VulcanWoman I do drink 'real' coffee on occasion, but can only tolerate one a day as they can be a bit milky for my delicate tum. I also find them be be very variable in taste and heat. I also have a machine a home that DH uses - and I also used to use, but I gave up on because there was just too much faffing around with the milk frother that didn't work well anyway.

So most times I just stick with my favourite instant brand, heat and froth the milk first so it feels a bit more special, and I'm happy.

Most instant tastes horrible to me - kind of rubbery and sickly. But the new ones that have actual powdered coffee beans in them are a bit better - I use them when camping.

Had some yakky instant the other day at a kids' party - was delighted to be offered a coffee, then had to pretend to enjoy it! Boak. The thing is I do like coffee strong, and instant tastes weak - but if you make it really strong, you just get rubbery/sickly overload.

However I'd never judge someone else for having it! If you like it, have it with pride.

^^ I use a different frothier-thingy!

I prefer Douwe Egberts instant to any other coffee, although I'm partial to an occasional latte from Costa or similar.

But I'm not that fussy and will happily drink other instant coffee, and fresh coffee if it's served to me can't abide the little particles at the bottom though, yuk.

I drink instant coffee or herbal tea at work. I haven't got time to waste standing around in the kitchen waiting for tea or coffee to brew before I can add milk etc. Instant coffee just needs a splash of boiling water and milk and off you go. Same goes for herbal tea (without the milk though obviously).

I fill my water bottle from the tap rather than the trickling water cooler for the same reason, it's just quicker.

I don't really get this coffee snobbery thing. I like both. A decent instant tastes fine to me. Better than a mediocre "proper" coffee sometimes.

I like nice food and wine too, so it's not like I don't have discerning tastebuds or anything

Good God, just because you don't like instant coffee doesn't make you a better person.

Dislike of instant coffee is just the same as disliking anything else. Your colleague was ROOOD.

To me it's one of those 'only on MN' things. Most people I know drink instant coffee.

There was a thread a week or so ago saying some teens didn't know how to make an instant coffee. er, there's instructions on the jar.

Your colleague was rude.

Well the 'snobbery' thing clearly works both ways! Plenty of people here saying they dislike fresh coffee and only drink instant.

It's not snobbery really is it? Just a taste preference. As Mintyy says, liking one and not the other doesn't make you a better person whichever way round you look at it!

Big difference between having a preference and walking up to a colleague who is making themselves a drink and sneering at their choice, though!

That's just rude.

The best cup of instant i have ever tasted was at a church/guides coffee morning those church ladies can make a mean pot of coffee

I did look into buying a coffee machine but what a right old faff they look.

I come from a family of coffee snobs. You haven't met a coffee snob until you've met a coffee snob from Melbourne.

They choke and sneer at me when I make an instant coffee when I am there. On a recent trip this developed into a debate and I was trying to get it into their thick skulls that when you are in someone elses house (it is my parents house but not the one I grew up in) and its 5am and you have jetlag and its winter and you just want a nice hot slightly milky drink, that instant coffee is fine really.

They roast their own beans. And there is a level of snobbishness against the snobs, so my brother was showing me how to make a "pour over" (single cup of drip-coffee where you use this special poncey kettle called a "drip kettle" to wet the grounds and let it drip through this contraption into the cup) and he ground some beans from Dad's grinder and said "he roasts them too long, but he won't be told" and rolled his eyes...

The pour-over does make a very good cup of "real" coffee though, and it is easy, if everything is all set up for you with the beans that have been roasted in the conical burr grinder ready to grind for about 7 seconds to put into the filter and the drip kettle is there already boiled. Its a very pure kind of brew, none of the "mud" that you can get with a french press.

I mentioned the caffiene thing in my defence actually and was told that instant can have more than espresso due to the extraction and that espresso has the quickest extraction, or something. But I'm not sure I actually believe that - he knows more about it than me but I know how I feel after an espresso compared to an instant. So whatevs. He said percolated is the most caffiene which makes sense.

My mum is the worst type of coffee snob though. She comes here and lectures the staff on how she wants it but drinks lattes. Nothing wrong with a latte if that's what you prefer but she maintains that she has latte's because of a medical condition she has. No, love, you just like it and feel intimidated by my brother and father who sneer at anyone who puts milk in it.

Its fucked up. Just drink what you want. I had to do the "oh are we still talking about that?" thing a couple of times when I was there and someone brought it up again.

And meanwhile their wine rack was full of cleanskins that cost less than $AU4.00 a bottle...in fairness it was very quaffable but pot kettle.