I tried out the new overhyped Starbucks Via Instant Coffee they introduced yesterday and today. The marketing material is over the top. It’s just fine-ground dehydrated coffee. When you rehydrate it, it’s lost most of the essential oils that make for good coffee.

Now you can enjoy our bold and roasty-sweet Italian Roast in an instant. Just tear open a pack of Starbucks VIA™ Ready Brew and add water. Let the coffee brew 10 seconds, stir, savor and enjoy. It’s not instant coffee the way you know it. This is genuine, dark-roasted Starbucks® coffee. 100% arabica and ethically sourced. Isn’t it wonderful? There’s now an instant coffee that you can start a whole new tradition with.

I noticed a couple problems with the coffee:

• It tasted good with milk and about 5 oz of water. With 7-8 oz, it was extremely watery. Maybe hotter water would help?
• The grounds formed a suspension in the water, the didn’t seem to dissolve very well. I stirred thoroughly.

The NY Daily News says it doesn’t taste very good, and bnet calls it a tough sell. At $0.99 per coffee, the price isn’t right for the casual drinker (their grande drip coffee is $1.70). I would recommend sticking to heartier fare–like the latte!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 2:48 am and is tagged with 100 arabica, drip coffee, starbucks coffee, coffee brew, instant coffee, ny daily news, new tradition, italian roast, couple problems, tough sell, drinker, starbucks, essential oils, latte, oz, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.