Nescafé’s Best Instant Coffee Is Based On A Traditional Mexican Brew

Instant coffee is a popular choice for 4% of American coffee drinkers and 25% of caffeine seekers worldwide. The top of the list of 13 instant coffee varieties ranked by our tester was Nescafé’s Mexican café de olla, a lightly sweet, cinnamon-inflected coffee traditionally made in a clay jar. The sweet, flavored coffee powder edged out the brand’s flagship Clásico, a dark roast variety made from robusta beans, and two other flavored, sweetened varieties. Nescafé’s caramel-flavored Dolca finished in the middle of the pack at sixth place, and Taster’s Choice Hazelnut held the anchor in 13th place.

Most instant coffee is made with robusta beans, which have a strong and slightly bitter flavor profile. The winning coffee is made from a blend of robusta and the more desirable arabica beans, which have a softer flavor profile. The recipe for Nescafé’s Café de Olla might just lie in the flavor profile of Mexico’s traditional spiced coffee. It’s deliciously balanced – strong yet sweet, with notes of cinnamon and orange. The Nescafé instant version has just enough sugar to take the edge off any bitter taste in the coffee, and cinnamon adds to the sweet profile. If you’re on the fence about the flavor of instant coffee, Nescafé’s Café de Olla could be the jar that wins you over.

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