Knit your own coffee (sort-of)

By Brian Clegg

I have always been very wary of non-coffee substitutes for the real thing, and wouldn’t normally think of buying any. However, we get a monthly goody box of odd products that manufacturers are trying to get people aware of, so sell relatively cheaply – the latest including this stuff called Barley Cup. To my surprise, it’s not bad. Not great, admittedly, but not bad either.

Its main ingredients are barley, rye and chicory. When I saw the C word I was distinctly nervous, having been exposed to the horror that is Camp ‘coffee’ in my youth. But it only seemed fair to give it a try.

First impressions is it’s a kind of anti-coffee. With real coffee, by far the best thing is the smell – the taste is definitely a relative let-down. Here the smell is… well, odd. Certainly not coffee. Not particularly unpleasant – perhaps roasting barley – but not coffee. The taste, however, is not unlike a cheap instant coffee. 

As a drink it’s warm and wet (as they say), but is never going to thrill. It is no substitute for a pungent, real coffee. But I find too many real coffees upset my stomach, so I tend to drink one or two instant ones a day as well – and this stuff really isn’t worse than those, with the advantage that it never had any caffeine in it, rather than being decaffeinated (not always a brilliant process), and also doesn’t have all the other slightly dodgy natural chemicals that may well be why coffee upsets my stomach.

One tip if you decide to try it – don’t be stingy. You need a good two heaped teaspoons in a mug to get a reasonable outcome. This does mean it’s quite expensive compared to instant coffee, with which it’s similarly priced by jar size.

Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.