Word: cupping
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...This is not a judgment on its flavor. It is because, in my personal experience, the drinking of instant coffee is a surefire indicator that the circumstances of my life have gone badly wrong. It is the taste of a grimy breakroom at a dead-end job. The grudging cup offered by a non-coffee-drinker during an unhappy visit. The weekend I spent in a dingy Iowa motel when my car broke down the first day I arrived in town for a newspaper internship...
Could instant coffee make me happy? This is the promise held out by Via, the instant - sorry, "100% Natural Instant & Microground" - coffee just launched by Starbucks, which it promises tastes just like a fresh-brewed cup of its own java. (See pictures of Italian coffee...
...went to my local Sbux and bought a pack each of Italian (dark roast) and Colombia (medium) Via. I also bought a cup of the daily dark roast, Sumatra, black, for comparison, as well as a couple of croissants and some vanilla-bean scones, as accompaniments and because TIME was paying. I also picked up a jar of Folgers crystals from the corner deli, whipped up a pot of homemade coffee (Guatemala, from Costco) and put on a pot of filtered NYC tap water...
According to Starbucks, the difference in Via instant is that, in addition to dehydrating a brewed reduction of coffee, it adds microground beans to add flavor and body to the finished product. It's meant to taste more like the cup you'd buy - and at $2.95 a three-pack, it had better. (My Folgers was $5.99 for a 60-cup jar, even at the usurious prices of a Brooklyn bodega.) The resulting coffee dust (more like espresso than the usual crystals) comes packaged in a sort of coffee Pixie Stix, premeasured. (See the top 10 food trends...
...that necessarily a bad thing? For the possibility of the USA one day winning a World Cup, absolutely not. For fans of the collegiate game, the communities that support the teams, and the parents who hope their kids can obtain scholarships, the debate is just beginning...