Rocket Fuel Hot Cup Energy Coffee

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It’s coffee Jim, but not as we know it

It is literally white coffee, in a ring-pull can. Below the coffee section, there are magic, anhydrous calcium oxide crystals in the base and some water. To heat, you remove the base, press the button to mix the crystals and the water, shake a few times and leave for three minutes.

What you get is a modestly sized cup’s worth of coffee at near-on exactly the right temperature to start drinking. While you’re unlikely to get anything too gourmet from a can, I’d describe the Rocket Fuel as ‘passable conference centre coffee’, tasting a little like drip coffee that’s been left on the hotplate for a while. Not great, but far from terrible – and better than I’ve had from some Wild Bean cafés on the A14.

Yes (of course) you can just put nice homemade coffee into a mini-flask in the morning and drink that. The big sell of this, however, is the convenience: keep one in the car for the end of long, winter rides, or perhaps throw one in the bag for an overnight bivvy. At 407g for a mere 200ml of coffee (about half a mug) it’s heavy, but it’s way lighter than packing a stove. If all you’re having for breakfast is cold cereal, then a hot cup of coffee (they make chocolate too) might be just the ticket.

Overall: There are times when alcohol-free beer is appropriate. And so, there are times when self-heating coffee is just the ticket: at the end of a frigid ride or first thing on a frosty hill top particularly. For those occasions, I don’t mind admitting that I’ll reach for one of these. Now, where’s my shade-grown, Guatemalan, dark roast, flat white?

Chipps

Review Info

Brand: Rocket Fuel
Product: Hot Cup Energy Coffee
From: Rocket Fuel, rocketfuel.uk.com
Price: £15 a pack of six
Tested: by Chipps for once
Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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