I try to steer clear of both instant and Starbucks (Love dark roast but hate burnt beans). The combination of Starbucks and Instant would be a hard pass for me.
I too hate burned beans and avoid Starbucks in general, but decent instant is so scarce to nonexistent that I am willing to drink Via at times despite hating Starbucks in general.
Ahhh. Charbucks. Fortunately, their stores are located in towns big enough to have a competing local roaster or coffee shop down the street.
I now note four pages of comments about "coffee coffee...." At this point in the thread, I'd ask why so much coffee on the trail?
For me, the taste of a good French roast or espresso is like chocolate, and the routine of morning coffee makes me feel civilized.
That said, does it do anything for my mental alertness and physical capacity?
Well, not after 20 min on the bike. Once adrenaline levels are up, and muscles and joints are running on all cylinders, the caffeine adds nothing.
Of course, if it's cold and one's going to sit around camp and has perhaps put off getting out of bed and breaking down the tent until after coffee, then I see the purpose of a little warmth and chemical stimulation. Although coffee and cycling just seem to go together - and especially at the shops where adrenaline junkies are forced to sit around wrenching for a living - the fact of the matter is that
coffee doesn't add anything other than esthetic value to our ride. After 20 minutes on the bike, the daily dose of caffeine is meaningless. (No need to cite the studies on rectal caffeine and effects of coffee on fatty acid to carbohydrate metabolism in caffeine-naive subjects. In subjects regularly exposed to caffeine, there should be no significant difference in efficiency or performance while touring at 50-70% max for 5-6 h.)
Something a lot of us already understand - if we can throw the stuff on the bike and start riding, we feel pretty good after about 20 minutes. During the hot months, an hour ride before breakfast
with a good sunrise is a great chemical and esthetic substitute for coffee. We don't really need the caffeine and coffee itself provides no nutrition.
Now, if you want to know how I came to occasionally carry a camp espresso boiler, let's consider the esthetics of sunrise in a 4-foot deep winter mountaineering camp surrounded by snow ghosts, with a small white china cup of espresso steaming on an icy white shelf of snow. That was worth the otherwise worthless weight of the coffee and aluminum espresso pot.
I like the discussion of coffee, but before mindlessly packing our usual, pre-office, morning routine onto our bikes, I encourage folks to think about why they do it and what they get out of a drink with no calories and less stimulation than riding. Most of us don't need it as much as we are led to believe.
'Nuf said. Time to finish my afternoon coffee and ride....
