Tesco Finest Espresso: Worst Coffee Ever?

Tesco Finest Espresso: A Review.

This ‘Espresso’ is far from fine. In fact I think It might be the worst coffee ever.

I should preface this by saying that I understand that by paying very little money (compared to other coffees) for pre-ground coffee made by a supermarket I was never going to get an amazing cup. I did however expect to get something drinkable. I normally buy Illy pre-ground which is vacuum sealed and, I think, about as good as you can get without buying beans and grinding them yourself. (Note for coffee nerds: I know I should grind at home, point me in the direction of an affordable grinder please!)

I thought I would try Tesco’s ‘Finest’ Espresso as it is much cheaper then most other espressos (but not the cheapest). Unfortunatly the beans were ground to a fine dust which my Espresso machine was unable to deal with. Every other coffee I have used has producted a shot (of varing quality) in about 20 seconds with no problem. The Tesco coffee took about 2 minutes of splutering. I think this is beacuse the grind is so fine that the water is unable to pass through. The resulting shot was disgusting. I was about 40% powdered coffee and 60% bitter undrinkable water.

The packet said ’suitable for all coffee makers’ but had instructions for using a cafetière (French press). Who the hell makes Espresso in a cafetière?! Wikipedia has a useful definition:

Espresso is a concentrated coffee beverage brewed by forcing very hot (but not boiling) water under high pressure through coffee that has been ground to a consistency between extremely fine and powder.

Illustration by Lokesh Dhakar.

That’s not possible with a cafetière is it? I tried using the coffee to make a regular cup in my cafetière in the hope that I could use it to make regular coffee with it but even this was completely undrinkable. It was bitter, burnt tasting and had none of the complex coffee flavours you might expect.

I will complain to Tesco and update here if they get back to me.

How coffee should taste.

I’ve just read an interesting article on the Times website about the quality of coffee here in the UK and overseas. Jeremy Torz, who is the co-founder of Union Hand-Roasted was bemoaning the size of the drinks offered by the main retailers. Apparently the large, very milky drinks favoured by much of the population came about as a way of being able to charge more for our daily cup.

“It would be difficult to sell a small 6oz cappuccino, the traditional Italian size, for much more money, so to make a viable business out of it, they started to make the drinks bigger. And how do you do that without overdosing everyone on caffeine? You add more and more milk.”

Photo by Csaba Bajko

The result is that all the wonderful flavours traditionally found in coffee are swamped by lots of sugary milk. This could be seen as a dumbing down of the flavour, instead of complex notes we get just plain old sugar. People seem to like it however, coffee sales have never been so high. Even independent coffee houses are benefiting from the influx of Starbucks, Neros and Costas around the country.

These are the tastes and aromas which coffee tasters look out for:

Here is what an average Latte provides (can you tell I have a degree in art?)

Torz suggests we are become more choosy about who prepares our drinks

“Watch your barista and see how much attention he pays, if he can’t do a standard espresso right, no amount of milk is going to make it any better.”