Worst coffee ever?

Inspired by this morning’s insipid brown water, what’s the worst coffee you’ve had?

I had the (genuine!) pleasure of being on a Brittany Ferries over-nighter last night, and while I love getting on a boat to and from France, I cannot fathom how they make such a terrible cup of coffee, even by French standards (the country isn’t exactly known for their coffee…).

It came out of a commercial bean to cup machine, but even so, it barely tasted of coffee – it was utterly grim! Barely tasted of coffee, had no depth or texture, was worse than the cheapest instant.

At least the pain au chocolat was acceptable…!

I dread it when handed a cappuccino you can feel from the weigh that it is basically a manky white coffee.  Special mention to Starbucks (which I try to avoid) and the others who go one step further an hand me a cup of hot milk!

Greggs

Any hotel where there’s a carafe sat on a hotplate for hours on end. And also….

Coffee from an urn at council organised training.

had no depth or texture

I can just about get my head around a taste having ‘depth’, but I have never got my head around a liquid having ‘texture’. It’s a words thing I appreciate, and that is not my specialist subject.

Worst – has to be the black instant stuff that used to come out machines at swimming pools in a plastic cup that was already so hot it was in a semi jelly like state and the contents might not pass the blind taste test with the bovril to work out which was which.

yep, that mellow birds stuff. ^^ up there ^^

McDonald’s coffee is particularly disgusting – cheap instant you kind of know what you are getting but for the big chains they really have no excuse, and I can’t fathom why costa/strbuck/nero is poor when it’s their core business

The OH came back with a bag of this from Morisons a few weeks ago:

It was mingin, there’s very little “coffee” flavor left, it’s like someone has made espresso with charcoal.

It came out of a commercial bean to cup machine, but even so, it barely tasted of coffee – it was utterly grim! Barely tasted of coffee, had no depth or texture, was worse than the cheapest instant.

Holliday Inn Express’ for a while* had Nescafe machines. They made posh coffees, from Nescafe red-top and was as bad as it sounds.

*there’s obviously a rolling program of refurbishments, because some were surprisingly nice, at a guess I’m saying year 2000ish.

Worst ever coffee – the stuff that came out the machine in the factory I worked at for a while in my gap year.

It was 10p a cup and on the 2pm-10pm shift I really needed caffeine to get through the last few hours, but it was memorably awful.

The machine somehow superheated the ‘coffee’ to at least 130 degrees celcius and it then would go from being scaldingly hot to stone cold if you so much as took your eye off it. So giving your mouth third degree burns was the lesser of two evils there.

Then the taste. If you had to distil ‘acridness’ this would be it. With notes of your least-favourite teacher’s bad coffee breath, and stale cigarette smoke.

I can’t remember if it was a Kenco or Nescafe machine, definitely one of those two.

Ironically on Brazilian Airlines. I don’t know what the **** it was other than it came from some a sachet, was extremely sweet, and the flight attendant claimed it was coffee.

Starbucks. It’s just a massive cup of warm milk

Common or garden coffee in Colombia no less. All the good stuff goes for export, the locals drink something that tastes like cheap instant diluted with dish water. Ironically the ‘national drink’ is ‘un tinto’, a small, strong black coffee, but mostly it’s horrific ime. I’m sure you can find decent coffee in Colombia, but it wasn’t easy when I was there.

Starbucks. It’s just a massive cup of warm milk

I once made the same observation, well actually I described Starbucks “coffee” as  coffee-coloured warm milk, and someone who I won’t name was deeply offended. Mind you it was probably because I said it so you might get away with it.

It was quite a few years ago but it has always remained stuck in my head because it was such a ridiculous thing to get wound up about.

The tin of Kenco in the staff room makes pretty desperate coffee.

The stuff you get at Screwfix when you finally agree to register for the trade counter where I was promised coffee would be on offer.

It wasn’t worth the time to fill out the form.

Lidl own instant. I took it back because it had a really odd chemical smell. They refused to exchange or refund, you have to contact Lidl via blabla. I did consider emptying it out in front of the entrance but realised that would penalise the customers not Lidl so vowed to buy coffee elsewhere and gave the coffee to Madame Edukator to leave next to the kettle at work for anyone brave enough to drink it.

Sounds like Brittany Ferries had the same supplier as Disneyland Paris.  Utterly vile, bitter rubbish.  Think it was the Segafredo brand you get all over France;  definitely one to avoid.

Ignoring instant, of which there are many many horrors,

For a nation obsessed with coffee, the go-to in the US is Folger’s and it is grim.  It’s the Hershey’s of the coffee world.

As for instant,

Supermarket brands are always going to be barely drinkable at best, but I cannot fathom why Nescafe is so popular.  It was regarded as a premium brand when I was young, was that because there was bog all else?  It’s filthy.  And not in a good way.

On the highstreet I can stomach Costa or Nero but Starbucks is utterly rank – bitter, cigarette flavoured stuff – grim. Apparently it’s got a punchy flavour to cut through the cream and syrups that most people think coffee requires, but if you want a straight americano or flat white, it’s disgusting.

While I appreciate the snobbyness of my attitude, I genuinely don’t understand why you walk down a street with independent coffee places, and the chains, and see people drinking Costa/’bucks/Nero etc – they’re no cheaper. I don’t get why you’d think you were getting a better product?

The instant muck they serve up on south west trains for the bargain price of about £3 a cup. Or maybe used to, haven’t bought one for a few years now. Think it was kenco.

Worst “proper” coffee I’ve tried is the Costa own brand stuff, Tesco were doing it for £2.50 a bag so I thought I’d give it a shot. Absolutely no taste of anything to it, gawd knows what they make it from, coffee it ain’t.

Depends on expectations. As said already you’d expect Starbucks to be better, can’t fathom how/why they think it’s a premium product.
French coffee is the same, I don’t expect a US diner such as Denny’s to give me a decent coffee but somehow France produces some grim shit in the nicest of cafés

I cannot fathom why Nescafe is so popular.

It’s down to the wrist action when you shake the coffee beans.

I can just about get my head around a taste having ‘depth’, but I have never got my head around a liquid having ‘texture’.

In the coffee snob world (I am one), ‘texture’ or ‘mouthfeel’ means ‘fines’ (bits of ground coffee detritus) suspended in your brew!

While I appreciate the snobbyness of my attitude, I genuinely don’t understand why you walk down a street with independent coffee places, and the chains, and see people drinking Costa/’bucks/Nero etc – they’re no cheaper. I don’t get why you’d think you were getting a better product?

Nero’s is usually good enough.

The problem is, that if I’m looking for coffee, then I’m in some sort of state where being better would be an improvement. I might not be having  a bad day, but things are hanging I the balance and I need caffeine more than I need the extortionate £5.60 it will cost me.

So unless it’s on recommendation, or their shop window has some really strong cake game.  Then I’m not prepared to risk being “could be better” turning into a bad day because some hipster thought he could start a coffee shop.

Same reason Greggs exists.  I could risk the local cafe for breakfast at 6am in a provincial town (the independent coffee shop doesn’t open till 9 obviously).  But I’m already exhausted and just want coffee and a breakfast roll and to not start the day with disappointment and sadness thinking that even Greggs would have been better than this.

The stuff you get at Screwfix when you finally agree to register for the trade counter where I was promised coffee would be on offer.

Whilst doing our house up I must have been in there daily and they asked did I want a trade account and they started filling out the forms.  Got as far as “qualifications” yes Degrees in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and the APMP’s Project Management qualification.  Computer says no. Do you have any NVQ’s?

So I still don’t get to use the tradesman’s entrance and drink the free coffee.

Toolstation do free coffee, but it’s hotter than the sun. So what are you supposed to do with it? Walk back to the van, your palm getting 3rd degree burns through the 5 micron thick plastic cup, and then spill it because they don’t come with a lid?

My youngest daughter does a dance class on Saturday mornings at Washington Arts Centre. The pub there does “coffee”. Their barista was evidently taught by Baldrick and uses the same ingredients found in his front line trench coffee.

Starbucks. It’s just a massive cup of warm milk

If you ever use those Costa Express machines you get in garages and some service stations… Have a look at it when it makes your drink. 20 seconds of foamy milk. 20 seconds of steamed milk. A slight pause. And then the machine literally just spits a small mouthful of coffee into it at the end.

If i can get away with it, I sometimes select flat white, then let half the milk pour into the tray underneath then once it’s made what it likes to think of as a flat white, I’ll add a shot of espresso in on top. And then take it to the till with the receipt for a flat white. It’s the only way to actually get coffee taste out of it.

France produces some grim shit in the nicest of cafés

Can’t argue with that. 🙁

The one at the fancy wedding venue/posh hotel we stayed in at the weekend caught me out. Lovely cooked breakfast with all the posh trimmings. Then a dowe eggberts (?) coffee machine that must have been using powedered milk. The cappucino I selected just tasted so synthetic and chemically that one sip was all I could stomach. By then there was too much of a queue to go and get a black coffee so I went without.

If you ever use those Costa Express machines you get in garages and some service stations… Have a look at it when it makes your drink. 20 seconds of foamy milk. 20 seconds of steamed milk. A slight pause. And then the machine literally just spits a small mouthful of coffee into it at the end.

I’ve seen inside vending machines, the vending machine Service Tech struck me as someone useful to befriend and I had a natural curiosity because of course I did.  (As it turned out, they have a degree of wiggle room as to what they actually refill the machines with.)

Also, in a past life I worked in a bowling alley where we had a counter-top one and one of the [daily|weekly]? scheduled tasks was to tear it down, clean it and put it back together.

I am never, ever drinking vending machine coffee.  A well-maintained one is grim enough, I’m surprised Preston Megabowl didn’t have a Listeria outbreak.

On Lewis in about 2006 we got given a cafetiere with instant coffee in it.

Starbucks of the big chains is by far the worst. However, Greek coffee wins it for me.

As far as the chains go, there’s something about Starbucks that tastes poisonous to me.

As far as national bad coffee goes, France wins that one for me. Painful to drink. How do they do it?

The Costa machines in some premier inns makes the garage machines seem like some boutique brand whose beans are grown with love by Monty Don.

When I worked on the Forth Bridge the safety critical guys drank something instant in a sachet that made Maxwell house appear up market. We referred to it as gravy granules, which is perhaps a disservice to bisto.

Conferences at big hotels in America. I think they prep it about three weeks in advance and then keep it just off the boil until the morning it’s required.

My grandma used to serve up Camp coffee. Dreadful stuff. That Ueshima is pretty poor too. Birds Mild is flavourless.

Tim Hortons was surprisingly poor I thought. Of the high street chains I think Nero is probably the best.

Wild Bean Cafe at BP garages in 00’s was uniformly bad. Starbucks is barely coffee adjacent.