Turkish Coffee; from to Cappuccino to Croissant

Regarding Guiness I am in full agreement. Although Kilkenny does it for me too.

But perhaps I am a guy of pure flavours, as I prefer my coffee and tea straight, and sometimes without sugar too.

However, I stand persuaded, because taste is a matter of ...taste.

Instant coffee isn't a big hit in all countries, for example in the Netherlands i was under the impression that proper coffee was the norm, where as instant was for very poor students, or for you went camping in uncivilised countries where there was no garentee that the locals would have coffee

There are two main types of coffee plant, Arabica and Robusta.
Robusta has a higher caffeine content and is a more versitile plant for growing (it will grow where Arabic will not), but is generaly considered to be inferrior for flavour (its more bitter and acidic)
Instant coffee tends to be heavy on the Robusta sort, being cheap to grow, and giving people their caffeine hit, so the theory is that where instant coffee is most popular, is where people have never really learned to appreciate proper coffee.

In the UK instant, or as i prefer to call it, fake coffee is the norm, and many visitors to the UK often complain about the poor quality of coffee here.
There are a coffeeshops that specialise in good coffee, but your typical outlet serves coffee that leaves much to be desired for.

The British preference for instant coffee goes back to WWII, when tea was in short supply, people turned to the instant coffee that was shipped over for the American GIs stationed here, after the way and after the end of rationing, people still drunk it and it became accepted as standard coffee.
Also it was quick and convenient, where as brewing proper coffee was deemed needlessly time consuming.
As such coffee machines are a novelty in the UK, as are electric coffee grinders, and are typicly much more expensive here than on the continent, but things do seem to be changing, and Douwe Egberts and Philips have teamed up together for what looks like a second Dutch attempt to corner the UK coffee market by introducing coffee bags and special but easy to use machine with which to use those coffee bags in.
Don't know how successfull the are, but who knows.
I predict that in the future Britain's tast in coffee will improve, as will its appreciation of a wider variety of teas.

Personaly i make my own coffee with a French Press, preferably with pre-ground Java beans.

Eh, don't they grow coffee in Mexico?
Seems strange that instant would be more popular, or is it because its cheaper?

Originally posted by Cywr Eh, don't they grow coffee in Mexico? Seems strange that instant would be more popular, or is it because its cheaper?

I don't know how instant coffee became so popular in Mexico, but until I arrived to the U.S., instant was the only coffee that I knew about. The culture of the instant coffee was so strong, that in some "cafes" they would give you a cup with warm water and a package of instant coffee.

I believe that there were some coffee places that actually had expresso, but I don't remember most people making any distintion between instant and expresso.

I visited Guadalajara again in 1995, and I remember seeing one expresso machine at a bookstore/coffee house. Jalisco Lancer took me there, in fact.

Originally posted by Cywr Up to and including WWII coffee in the Uk was mostly made from liquid coffee extract, the most popular brand being Camp Coffee, with its label showing a Sikh orderly offering a tray to a rather gloriously uniformed Indian Army officer. It may well have been present, but my understanding was that coffee wasn't very popular in the UK untill WWII.

True, except among the upper classes either in mid-morning or after dinner. Of course it HAD been popular in the 17th and 18th century. I assume the country changed to tea after the conquest of India.

I'm not sure why the other great Western tea-drinnking nation, Russia, went that route rather than the coffee route.