Worst coffee ever?

I came on her to post Mellow Birds and it's the first response 😄

The old school McDonald's coffee tasted medicinal.

I did get a costa machine coffee out of desperation one day on the way to a Welsh trail centre. Honestly think I got a cup of the cleaning fluid…

France produces some grim shit in the nicest of cafés

Amongst the French crimes against coffee is the one where they heat the milk to nuclear fusion temperatures. I once made the mistake of complaining and the "barista" (I use the term loosely) told me I needed to harden TF up.

There are quite a few nice coffee places in Paris these days, but it's been a long time coming (and they are hideously expensive).

Costa always tastes burnt and unpleasant to the point I would rather go without. Otherwise it’s whatever is in the coffee jar at work. It says Kenco on the tin but who knows what’s actually in it

You put milk in your coffee, DrJ ? There's your problem right there. You've misunderstood the use of the hot milk machine, it's for making chocolat chaud..😋

Worst I have ever tasted is in the Swinley cafe, this was a few years back so it may have improved but I am too traumatized to try again.

The coffee in the Marriott in Swindon is possibly the worst I've tasted. It's from a machine that looks like it's supposed to be bean to cup, but isn't, it's just really bitter, horrible coffee. I'd honestly rather they just left a jar of nescafe and some hot water...

Devils bridge snacks is definitely up there. Shame as the bacon and sausage butties are lovely.

I made the mistake of ordering cafe au lait in Paris Cafe, dear good it was ****ing awful mostly tepid uht milk with a tiny amount of unbrewed coffee.

Worst I have ever tasted is in the Swinley cafe, this was a few years back so it may have improved but I am too traumatized to try again.

It's not

My dad bought some coffee back from Zambia once, packed in a nifty looking sack - except all it tasted of was the sack 🤮

Had some of that kopi luwak coffee recently, the stuff that's made from partially digested beans after they've passed through a cat, apart from being very mellow it tasted like it had been substantially watered down, very uninspiring 😕

Drinking Harrods Coffee From the 1930s 😄

I ordered a £3 cappuccino in one of the services on the m74 awhile back, right in front of me the lady pulled out one of those ‘instant cappuccino’ powder sachets, tipped it into a grubby mug and topped it up with not quite hot water. I declined the drink or payment, she wasn’t surprised so I guess I wasn’t the first….

I ordered a £3 cappuccino in one of the services on the m74 awhile back, right in front of me the lady pulled out one of those ‘instant cappuccino’ powder sachets, tipped it into a grubby mug and topped it up with not quite hot water.

Many years ago, a mate and I finished a MTB ride in Ambleside, way later than anticipated. Weather was miserable. Had a quick scoot around the town and there was only one cafe still open - sort of plastic tablecloths, cheap fittings, the whole works.

Asked if they were still serving and they said they'd do us coffee. Next thing, a sachet of instant cappuccino was opened in front of us, the contents tipped into a mug and water that was somehow 300 degrees C (I have no idea how, it was like it had been passed over a nuclear power station) poured in on top of it.

God it was vile but also, we desperately needed it.

Unsurprisingly, the cafe has long since ceased to exist!

I was thinking I'm a coffee snob until this thread come along with so many finding naff coffees

My gripe is the £3.75  tepid flat white poured into a cold cup and the milk only warmed up to 50° so the barista can draw a nice design on the top. Some think they are too good to use a thermometer and of course think they know so much better about how to pour coffee

How about, not worst but most disappointing? Like, even the mankiest of coffee can still lift the soul in the right circumstances... And a crap coffee when you're expecting a crap coffee at least isn't an ambush. But context is as important as outcomes...

Did a week with White Room and we nipped over the border to La Thuile in Italy. Rode down from the refuge at the top of the pass, arrived in town, Stevo insists we all take a moment out to go and get the best coffee we've ever tasted. We all go to the coffee place, it looks great, we get served our coffee in little cups , it smells great. Drink it, it tastes exactly and I mean exactly like the Tesco Finest Comombian instant I drink at home.

And I mean, that's not a bad cup of coffee at all, it's what I buy for myself, but there's a big difference between having an instant coffee in the office when you're dying, and riding down an alpine pass into a different country to get served the best coffee ever by a really hot incredibly gay Italian guy and having it taste like that.

Most disappointing: when the Nespresso machines first appeared a friend bought one and given the hype I was expecting a great coffee. I kept my opinion to myself, told some white lies and we're still friends. The latest trend is grinders that put a stop to the conversation for the time they run but to be fair the coffee is usually good.

Our work machine does pretty terrible coffee, but it's free so there's that I guess. The worst is usually those little sachets of Nescafe Original. Always just tastes burnt and gross. I'm not really a coffee snob, don't mind Costa or Starbucks tbh. McDonald's always tastes burnt to me too.

Reading this I've determined that all coffee is crap unless it's the one you make yourself with your own special blend & grind. And I don't see nothin wrong, with a little blend and grind....

I like coffee but I'm really not that fussy, maccys and Greggs is mostly ok to me. Did have one yesterday from Greggs that was not good, too strong and burnt.

I don't find the coffee in France that bad either, little noisette is nice, but I'm clearly in the minority so have no idea what I'm talking about!!

Stafford rugby club: "Straight from the kettle to the cup".  Bypassing any coffee.

Any coffee drink that contains anything but coffee and water is a pudding.

There's a Lavazza machine in one of the meeting rooms at work, the sort where you pop open a little flap, drop a sachet in, close it up and the (alleged) coffee drops into the cardboard cup below. I tried the cappuccino a couple of days ago. BIIIIG mistake.

I got given a coffee advent calendar last year and some of it was flavoured. Which is an instant no in my books, however, they all came in little silver packets with nothing telling you what it was (at least early in the morning pre-coffee) - anyway, one of those flavours was peppermint.

Yes, peppermint coffee. It tasted exactly like you'd brushed your teeth and took a swig of coffee at the same time. Grim.

Had some of that kopi luwak coffee recently, the stuff that’s made from partially digested beans after they’ve passed through a cat, apart from being very mellow it tasted like it had been substantially watered down, very uninspiring 😕

It's a marketing con, nothing special about it other than novelty. To make it worse, the locals now keep the civet cats in tiny cages to produce it, to cater to dumb westerners with too much cash. Don't buy it. It's shit, massively overpriced and promotes cruelty.

Linky

I got given a coffee advent calendar last year and some of it was flavoured. Which is an instant no in my books, however, they all came in little silver packets with nothing telling you what it was (at least early in the morning pre-coffee) – anyway, one of those flavours was peppermint.

Yes, peppermint coffee. It tasted exactly like you’d brushed your teeth and took a swig of coffee at the same time. Grim.

I think I might have been given the same one 😂

It was a selection of instant mocha / cappuccino / latte drinks.  The Peppermint tasted like someone had dissolved a mint aero bar in a cappuccino.

Wasn't actually that bad as long as you forgot it was coffee and just treated it like weird coffee flavor hot chocolates.

oh now we are getting somewhere flavoured coffee....

Mrs T-R christmas day a number of years ago .... produced a bag of "whisky coffee beans"

• You like whisky - you like coffee , youll love this .

it was bloody awful !

id assumed it was the Dave Gorman little ugly piece of shit relationship test ......

>> Lidl own instant. I took it back because it had a really odd chemical smell.

It’s rebranded Kenco. The chemical smell was so bad that it used to make you gag when you opened the cupboard door. Morrisons did give me my money back though.

Flavoured coffee! I bought some 'Little's Christmas Spirit' instant a few years ago and it was so bad I emailed them to ask for a refund 😀

Anywhere in the military that was out of a, "norgy", usually called cofftea because you couldn't tell the difference. Added bonus of eau de range stew taste to boot as the container was also used for hot scoff.

The Indian Cottage in Shoreham-by Sea.
After a meal I asked for an Espresso. What I got was about the right size for Espresso, but it was just very, very strong Nescafe - even with a few non-dissolved granules around the rim.

oh now we are getting somewhere flavoured coffee…

I actually like (some) vanilla flavoured coffee.

<ducks for cover>

called cofftea because you couldn’t tell the difference.

"If this is coffee, bring me tea. If this is tea, bring me coffee!"

Lidl's Italian beans (5/5, red packet) are pretty horrible but I quite like the 4/5 (green packet) ones they do.

Worst I've had recently is a local mid-range restaurant who also do events, weddings, christenings etc.. brought out 5 large cafetieres which were filled with cheap (and very weak) instant coffee. Coffee beans aren't even expensive!

The absolutely worst i can remember was only a month or so ago, filter coffee at breakfast in a hotel in San Antonio.   I wasn't the only person who said it, and the whole breakfast was pretty rough.

My problem is that once you get to a reasonable level of decent it all become much of a muchness, and I can't tell the difference between hand ground blah blah blah and Starbucks,  or if I can tell, its no better. What am I missing?

I actually like (some) vanilla flavoured coffee.

<ducks for cover>

[Still image from the movie 'falling down' which I don't seem to be able to hotlink...  don't think I've ever watched that movie]

This is pretty bad, not the worst, but bad.

but it says barista premium on it

Great Ocean Road, Aus stopped and bought coffee from some kind of diner.  Completely suffused in the stench of old chip pan oil. Rank!  Straight out of the window.

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

There's a theory behind that:

For a long time, coffee imported from the French colonies came in duty-free, making beans from the rest of the world more expensive. The French colonies produced mostly Robusta coffee, a cheaper bean with a stronger, harsher taste than Arabica, the other predominant coffee varietal. Because of the access to mostly Robusta beans, the French palate grew accustomed to this harsher varietal, and before coffee deregulation in the 1950s, Robusta comprised 80 percent of the French coffee market. More than 60 years later, that palate for a harsher bean still exists, and Robusta beans still account for around 50 percent of French coffee.

Just bought a Greggs iced latte in a can. I was expecting it to be sickly sweet, but it tasted utterly awful and nothing at all like coffee. Down the sink.

There’s a theory behind that:

For a long time, coffee imported from the French colonies came in duty-free, making beans from the rest of the world more expensive. The French colonies produced mostly Robusta coffee, a cheaper bean with a stronger, harsher taste than Arabica, the other predominant coffee varietal. Because of the access to mostly Robusta beans, the French palate grew accustomed to this harsher varietal, and before coffee deregulation in the 1950s, Robusta comprised 80 percent of the French coffee market. More than 60 years later, that palate for a harsher bean still exists, and Robusta beans still account for around 50 percent of French coffee.

Black Sheep Coffee is a chain that's trying to promote a "Robusta revival" claiming that actually it produces coffee as good as Arabica.

From their website:

DESCRIPTION
Sourced specifically for Black Sheep Coffee our house espresso is a single origin specialty Robusta coffee from the mineral rich soils along the Bhadrariver belt in India, which is some of the finest in the world. With double the caffeine, richer crema and lower acidity compared to its Arabica cousin it features notes of hazelnut and dark chocolate. Perfect as an espresso or milk-based drink (At Black Sheep Coffee we think that the best way to brew our robusta at home is using a espresso machine or a moka pot, and that is the reason why the preground bags are specifically ground to use in those devices - however, if you want to get the perfect grind size for you, we recommend that you buy the whole beans).

Origin: India
Farm: Sethuraman Estate
Owner: Nishant Gurjer
Region: Karnataka
Variety: Robusta
R Grade: 85
Harvest: November To March
Tasting Notes: Dark Chocolate, Hazelnut
Processing: Washed
Altitude: 1000 Masl
Roast Profile: Medium - Light

This very morning.

Thought the sink dishcloth had been wrung out over the cup.......

Spoilt that moment when I needed a 'pep' up.

(Dispensed from a horsebox style coffee bar on the sea front)

@sirromj, I keep trying premium instants in a can like that with great optimism and they keep turning out to be basically normal instants but with sand in.

I think I’ve discovered the worst coffee I’ve ever had. Cycle club cafe stop at Shobden Aerodrome in Herefordshire. Supposedly americano, looked and tasted like used engine oil with floating, scummy bits around the rim. Rank!