What is your favorite Mass Market Coffee in US?

Yep. DD. After that, Green Mountain.

But really, all of it is swill. Just add cream and try not to taste it. None of it is enjoyable, it is just a drug outside of home.

My wife prefers Burger King. Most of the Nowheresvilles we visit don't know what a Dunkin Donuts is.

Lucky Steer is a local chain restaurant that serves a pretty good cup of plain joe. Otherwise, there is my own coffee pot and Maxwell House. Or Mountain Dew. :(

I seldom drink coffee away from home, unless I have brewed it myself. In our area, the LaRue Coffee Service provides good coffee and brewers to offices and restaurants, but unless they install a water filter, it will be a scummy mess. My wife had their service at her office and used bottled water and it was fine. The water is the secret. Without good water, no mass market coffee will be good. But to answer your question, I drink Coke to stay awake. Coffee doesn't keep me awake. I drink several cups late at night and go right to sleep. harrym

I think I would disagree with you about Burger King, while they do use a liquid concentrate, the taste in the cup is not bad.

Krispy Kream makes a reasonably decent americano.

I have new appreciation on the filtered water point.

A few days ago, I stopped using filtered (Brita) water when I had to dispose of the filter (and haven't had time to replace it).

I surely taste the difference.

As for the best road coffee... Burger King gets my vote. "Yuck" to conentrated coffee? True, it's a concentrate, but I STILL find it to be a tasty alternative to just about anything else I can get out in the "cruel real world." The product... Douwe Egbert's "Cafitesse" also works great at home, if you can get a commercial coffee distributor to sell you some (and you can make it stronger than BK does). However, it is expensive when compared to home roasting green beans.

DR

1. Starbucks - they are everywhere now so I have to call them mass produced.
2. Third Cup
3. Tim Horton Donuts
4. McDonalds if desperate

A saw that Dunkin Donuts has been nominated but the last time I was in Dunkin Donuts it was in FT Lauderdale and the shop was in disgusting condition and the coffee... I'm not sure what it was but it was not coffee!

The BK product is not "yuck" - it is probably the most consistently fresh mass market cup. The concentrate method insures that each cup is freshly brewed at the time of service. In other places, the coffee sometimes starts out better, but after sitting on the hot plate for 1/2 hour or more, fugetttaboutit.

Part of the fun of being a true coffee snob is you can puncture the pretensions of lesser coffee snobs. Thus, when someone says "robusta - yuck" you can point out Malabar Gold.

But what are the effects of creating the concentrate? That is, how is the concentrate made? If it's boiled down, then I don't think that subsequent fresh brewing (or, more specifically, dilution and reheating) is that much of a blessing.

Which, of course, is not 100% robusta, so it doesn't quite dispel the "yuck" factor of a 100% robusta brew.

I'm not sure if its a cold brew or hot brew process. I know the concentrate is kept frozen for freshness. I don't think concentrate is ever made by "boiling down" regular brewed coffee...that would indeed be yucky. Rather you make a concentrate by brewing an extra strength coffee with less water. You can remove even more water thru reverse osmosis or vacuum evaporation. Not only would boiling at atmospheric pressure damage the product but boiling is an energy inefficient method.Again the extra processing steps add cost and I would not want to compare it to freshly roasted home roast brewed in a vac pot, but compared to the typical mass market offering of stale preground that has been "resting" on a hot plate, it is often better, much much better. You only have to taste this product to know it does not taste boiled or reheated. Diluted is another question because Americans do expect weak coffee, but that could be easily adjusted by adding less water. It's not a perfect product, but it's not the "instant" product that it appears to be at first glance.

In effect, straight espresso is a coffee concentrate which can you dilute with hot water to make brewed strength "Americanos". If you took fresh espresso, froze it immediately after brewing and used it to make Americanos, I think the result would not be bad, nor would mixing it with hot water give it a "reheated" taste.

If brewed at concentrated strength, doesn't that effect quality--i.e., it's being brewed at a less than optimal water:ground coffee ratio?

When I used the term dilution, I wasn't refering to the creation of weak coffee per se (though I don't doubt it's weaker than what I brew), but to the dilution of the concentrate with water to a drinkable level.

Can't say that I've been in a Burger King in the last 10-15 years.

Is espresso really a concentrate? My understanding was that the chief difference between it and brewed coffee was not in the comparative concentration of the dissolved compounds that each share, but in the emulsified oils that only espresso has (to any signficant degree).

I'll have to re-visit BK coffee.

Related to coffee concentrate, how do you think this coffee is made:

IIRC, Keurig is not a concentrate system. Instead inside each little K-cup is a little mini cone filter filled with preground coffee. The brewing machine pokes a hole at the top thru which hot water is injected and a drain hole at the bottom that the coffee comes out of. Theoretically the ground coffee in the cup remains fresh because it is sealed with a plastic cup on bottom and foil on top - like an oversized version of the cream portion capsules that you get at diners or a miniature yogurt container Basically a pod system for brewed coffee, along the same lines as Melitta's new javapod system, but more oriented to the office setting and more expensive because the k-caps are fairly elaborately constructed for something that goes in the trash.

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Jill and I agree. It is BK if there isn't homeroast available. Not bad, really, though a bit malty tasting, if that makes any sense. Better than coffee that hates you personally like is available everywhere else.

Ted

Boy, that's a tough one. When traveling to CT from Washington DC on I-95, you will find off-ramps that will include the fast-food restaurants. In some of these complexes, they will have sort of a wagon that will have coffee that will be up-scale (up-ed prices also) coffee which will cost a lot in comparison to McDonald's or Burger King. I've tried them a couple of times, but the coffee is too "thick" tasting for me. So I stick with McDonald's, although I'd prefer to have it fresh -- and when they say, I'll make you a fresh pot, I'd prefer to have a fresh "clean" pot -- but both conditions are just too much to wish for.

If you include Starbucks in this survey, I'll have to pass. But my husband will go there. I don't like the atmosphere of Starbucks. I've tried their other drinks, but have found none to my liking.

Dee

Last night I was listening to Ralley James (sp?) on 1210 Philadelphia and she was reading the news about a Burger King that I believe was on Highway

90 that personnel (1 or more?) had put some sort of spray chemical on a policeman's food, there was quite a few incidences of spitting, etc. I haven't seen it on-line. Would be interesting to read about the case. Dee