Heather du Plessis-Allan: In defence of instant coffee

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

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23h ago 2:50

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I just want to be clear, I don't want to start a disagreement between shows here on Newstalk ZB, but I did listen to Mike Hosking this morning talking some smack, and listening to it, I felt, no, I'm gonna have to say something about this just to restore a bit of balance to this debate.

In defence of instant coffee, the stuff is great. I love it. I drink it nearly every day, little flat white in the morning, little old school instant in the afternoon.

I am, I would like to point out, squarely in the demographic that should be snobby about coffee, right? It should be like fresh beans from Rwanda every day. I grew up on the cafe culture, live in Ponsonby, have some of the best cafes in the country around the corner, but I still write by instinct.

Now I don't want to be super unfair on Mike, because obviously he's a legend, but he does some girl math when he wants to. Instant coffee is not more expensive than your ground beans.

I mean, if you look at it on the face of what you're paying at the supermarket, yep, sure, your classic Makona at $12 for 100 g does appear to be more expensive than your Havana 5 Star coffee beans at $10.50 for 200 g, cause obviously getting 200 g of the beans as opposed, as opposed to 100 g of the instant.

So, you know, you're paying for twice as many beans for roughly the same price.

But you and I know that's not how it works.

You and I know that you're getting more cups of coffee out of that little Macona jar, cause you're only using one teaspoon at a time. You're using the beans, you're gonna have to fill up that whole double shot filter basket, and so you're gonna whip through that 200 g a whole lot faster.

But the thing about it is, obviously, you know, I live in Ponsonby, OK?

It's not just about price. I can afford to go and buy myself a nice little flat white. It's about the fact that it tastes good.

Instant coffee tastes good in its own special watery mud way. Do you know what I mean?

It's got its place in life. I don't think we need to discount it.

It's kind of like you can enjoy yourself a craft beer, but then you can also want a dirty old Corona from time to time. Or you can make a virtue out of eating your Vogels and getting all that fiber going through your gut. But then sometimes you just want a nice white slice with your snag. You know what I mean?

Sometimes you just want to get down in the gutter with that little instant coffee. Not everyone wants to drink an espresso at 3 in the afternoon and be pinging at 11 at night. Still, that's the place of the instant coffee. You have that at 3, it's got a little light little buzz until 7.Sleep like a baby after that.

And finally, just the final point on this is. It turns out more of us actually drink the instant than the espresso.

This may shock you, because we're the land of the flat white, but we are also the land that invented the instant coffee in Southland. And the last survey I saw said 44% of us drink the instant, and only 34% of us drink the espresso.

And as Mike likes to say, numbers don't lie.

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