The case for… Instant coffee

For too many people, coffee is a substitute identity. You know these people with their talk of Chemex v V60, siphons, cold brew, crema loft and bean provenance, their baffling fascination with civet turds. The more baroque one’s coffee preference, the weaker the personality.

Instant coffee is some people’s personality, too – none of them are proud of it. It’s the natural choice of the journalist working marriage-ending hours, the intern rising at 4am. A private detective would lack credibility beating the streets with an AeroPress in their pocket. Instant coffee is, ironically, all about the grind.

But isn’t that what coffee is for? It kick-starts your day. It’s human petrol. Aptly, V60 is a model of Volvo, but you don’t need to fuel your car with cardamom-infused gasoline from a double-chambered vacuum pump. You just need to get where you’re going. Thinking of it like this, instant coffee doesn’t taste bad. It’s a miracle how good it tastes, considering you can make it in three seconds.

Instant coffee speaks to hard reality. A tough drink that sugar-coats nothing and always has your back. Instant coffee says, ‘You’ve had 19 seconds of REM sleep, you look like a pufferfish, but you are not losing your job today.’ It shows up when you need it most, before you know you need it, like a father driving his daughter home from a gig.

Drinking this stuff is being kicked in the heart and kissed on the head and booted out the door, in one motion. It’s not for the Epicurean, but life isn’t always a garden.

Illustration API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images