We all know that instant coffee doesn’t taste as good as the coffee we get from our local cafe. It’s often too bitter, and for many of us who like fancy coffees, it can be a bit boring. However, it is much cheaper than going to a cafe every morning, so sometimes we just have to bite the bullet and drink it.
But one man on social media has claimed that just adding one extra step to your coffee-making routine could actually transform your tired instant coffee into a delicious drink that you’d be willing to pay upwards of £4 for.
A video shared on Instagram by Brandon Yang demonstrated that by changing one thing about how you make your instant coffee at home, you can elevate your morning drink – and you don’t even have to buy the extra ingredient, as it’s something we all have in our kitchens already.
Brandon declared in his video: “Cafes might go broke after this.”
Brandon’s tip was to just add some cold water to your mug as soon as you add the instant coffee, instead of just topping the cup with hot water straight away.
He said: “The normal way to make instant coffee is to take your instant coffee, put it in your cup, and then add boiling water. We’re not going to do that.
“What you’re going to do is take your instant coffee, put a little bit of water in there first, swirl it around so it dilutes and mixes all together, and then you’re going to add your boiling water.
“What that does is it gets rid of all the bitterness and all the tartness that instant coffee has. And that’s how you make barista coffee at an instant coffee price.”
Adding some cold water from your tap to your instant coffee before you add hot water stops the coffee from burning, meaning you’ll get a coffee that is far less bitter. And commenters who had already tried the hack agreed that the drink tastes much better when following Brandon’s advice.
One person said: “It’s true, I’ve been doing this for years.”
Another added: “I thought I was the only one who did this. I get called weird for doing this.”
A third wrote: “I do this so that when you pour the boiling water on it, it doesn’t burn the granules.”
If you take milk in your coffee, you can swap the cold water for milk, as this will still stop the hot water from burning your coffee, and you’ll have a perfectly milky coffee at the end.