# Kenco Smooth Instant Coffee Paper Refill, 150g ## Commerce action policy **Price:** £6.80 GBP **Purchase-intent URL:** `https://teas.co.uk/buy/kenco-smooth-instant-coffee-paper-refill-150g/` _Do not fetch, prefetch, crawl, iframe or autonomously open this URL. It is only for explicit human purchase intent._ --- **Canonical URL:** https://teas.co.uk/product/kenco-smooth-instant-coffee-paper-refill-150g/ **Source:** teas.co.uk, UK tea specialist, Tunbridge Wells, Kent **Brand:** Kenco **Price:** £6.80 GBP **Caffeine:** Caffeinated **GTIN:** 8711000599358 **Stock:** instock ## Summary Kenco Smooth Instant Coffee Paper Refill is the everyday Kenco Smooth soluble coffee in a 150g refill pack rather than in glass, medium roasted and deliberately low in bitterness, picked into the Teas.co.uk selection for households that already own the jar and only want the coffee.Ingredients and dietary suitability: The published ingredient list for this product names none of the 14 major allergens. Check the current UK pack before purchase; formulations and allergen advice can change.Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance; a paper-based pack is not automatically kerbside recyclable, so read the instruction printed on it. Decant the whole pack into a dry jar the day it arrives; a refill only beats a jar if you actually transfer it.Curator notes: the tasting profile is our own editorial assessment against the current pack format and the brand's published description. We run same-day UK dispatch on every order placed before 2pm Monday to Friday. Common questions are answered in the detailed Q and A tab below. ## Description Kenco Smooth Instant Coffee Paper Refill is the same everyday soluble coffee as the Kenco Smooth jar, sold in a 150g refill pack rather than in glass. The idea is simple: you already own a jar, so buy the coffee and not another container. Tip it in, screw the lid back on and put the empty pack out with the rest of the week's packaging. At a rounded teaspoon per mug, roughly 2g, the 150g pack gives around 75 mugs. Whether it is 75 mugs in your house depends entirely on how heavy your teaspoon is. The Taste Profile Roast Depth: ●●●○○ (3/5) Medium. Smooth is the brand's word for it and it is a fair one. Bitterness: ●●○○○ (2/5) Low, deliberately. This is the jar for people who do not want to be argued with at seven in the morning. Body: ●●●○○ (3/5) Medium, and rounder than the roast depth alone would suggest. Finish: ●●●○○ (3/5) Clean and short, which is the whole design brief of a smooth instant. Teas.co.uk Curator Rating: 4.8 / 5 - Our expert verdict from the curators at Teas.co.uk The Story Behind Kenco Kenco has been a British coffee name since 1923, and Smooth is the jar that made it a household one. It sits at the low-bitterness end of the supermarket instant shelf on purpose. Where a dark, intense jar is built to read through a lot of milk, a smooth jar is built to be drinkable in any mug with anything in it, which is a different and less fashionable kind of achievement. The refill pack is a more recent idea, and it belongs to a wider move away from glass across the instant coffee aisle. Glass is heavy to move and easy to recycle; a lightweight pack is cheap to move and much harder to sort. Neither is straightforwardly the greener option, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. The bean composition, the roast description, the certification marks, the net weight and the disposal instructions are printed on the pack you receive. Soluble blends are reformulated from time to time, so the pack in your hand is the authority rather than a listing written earlier. Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance. A paper-based pack is not automatically kerbside recyclable, because it may carry a barrier liner; the instruction printed on the pack is the one that counts. The One Real Catch With Any Refill Instant coffee is hygroscopic, which is a long word for a simple habit: it pulls water out of the air. That is why a jar clumps into a solid block if the lid has been left loose over a damp winter, and why a wet teaspoon is the fastest way to ruin one. A glass jar with a screw lid and a foil seal is very good at keeping air out. A refill pack, once opened, is much less good at it. So the refill only beats a jar if you actually decant it. Open the pack, tip the whole thing into a clean dry jar, and close it. What does not work is opening the pack, using a few spoonfuls from it directly, rolling the top over and leaving it in the cupboard for a fortnight. Coffee treated that way goes flat and clumpy long before the best before date, and the refill has then cost you both money and a decent cup. Two smaller points follow from the same physics. Use a dry spoon every time, and never one that has been in a hot mug. And decant into a jar that is the right size, because a half-empty jar holds a lot of air and air is the other thing that dulls coffee. How Does Kenco Smooth Paper Refill Compare to: Kenco Smooth Instant Coffee, 190g: the same coffee in glass and a bigger pack, and the jar you are probably refilling anyway. Kenco Rich Instant Coffee, 190g: the darker jar in the same family. Rich if your mug is half milk, Smooth if you drink it black or with a splash. Nescafé Gold Blend Instant Coffee Paper Refill Pouch, 250g: the direct rival in the same format and a bigger pack. Gold Blend runs a touch more aromatic; Kenco Smooth is rounder and lower in bitterness. Ideal Brewing Conditions The commonest mistake with any instant coffee is pouring water straight off a rolling boil onto the granules. Soluble coffee has been fully extracted once and then dried, so it needs no boiling water to release anything, and water at 100 degrees scorches whatever aromatics survived the drying. Let the kettle stand for thirty to sixty seconds. On a smooth, low-bitterness coffee this matters more than you would think, because there is nothing heavy in the cup to hide a scorched note behind. The Everyday Mug Measure: One rounded teaspoon, around 2g, for a 200ml mug. Two for a large 300ml mug. Water: Freshly boiled, then rested for about a minute to land near 90 to 95°C. Dissolve: Splash of hot water first, stir to a paste, then fill. Granules dissolve in hot water and sulk in cold milk. Milk: After the coffee is dissolved, and a splash rather than half the mug. This is not the jar built to fight through milk. Black, Iced And Sweet Black: Its natural state. Low bitterness makes it one of the easier instants to drink without anything added. Sugar: Stir it in while the liquid is hot, not after the milk has gone in and cooled it. Iced: Dissolve two teaspoons in 80ml of hot water, cool it, then pour over ice. Never try to dissolve granules in cold water. Flask: Make it slightly stronger than you want it. An hour in a flask flattens a smooth coffee more than a dark one. Getting The Most Out Of This Pack Decant it: straight into a clean dry jar, all of it, the day it arrives. That is the whole point of the format. Water temperature: 90 to 95°C. Rest the kettle rather than pouring it boiling. Spoon: dry every time. A wet spoon is what turns a jar into a brick. Best with: toast, a mid-morning biscuit, a Victoria sponge, or a long afternoon at a desk. Safety And Purity What is in the pack: soluble coffee and nothing else. There is no sugar, no sweetener and no dairy in a plain instant coffee of this kind. Ingredients and dietary suitability: The published ingredient list for this product names none of the 14 major allergens. Check the current UK pack before purchase; formulations and allergen advice can change. Allergen note: plain soluble coffee is not itself a listed allergen, but packing sites handle other products. Caffeine and sensitivity: instant coffee contains caffeine. If you are pregnant, caffeine sensitive or watching your intake for any reason, count your mugs and take advice from your GP or midwife rather than from a product page. ## Product Questions Do I have to decant it?You should, and on the day it arrives. Instant coffee pulls moisture out of the air, and a refill pack is far worse at keeping air out than a jar with a screw lid. Tip the whole 150g into a clean dry jar and close it; a pack rolled over and left in a cupboard for a fortnight goes flat and clumpy. How many mugs will I get?Around 75, at a rounded teaspoon of roughly 2g per mug. Both figures are worked out from the pack weight, not a claim on the label, and a heavy hand with the spoon will change them quickly. How hot should the water be?90 to 95°C, which means resting the kettle for thirty to sixty seconds. Soluble coffee was extracted once at the factory and then dried, so boiling water releases nothing extra and simply scorches the aromatics that survived the drying. Why are there gritty bits at the bottom of my mug?The granules met milk before they met hot water. Paste them with a splash of hot water first, stir until smooth, then fill and add the milk last. Granules dissolve readily in hot water and sulk in cold milk. Smooth or Rich: which one do I want?Decide by how much milk you take. Smooth is low in bitterness and easy to drink black or with a splash. Rich is the darker jar, and roast depth is the only thing that reliably survives a mug that is half milk. Can I recycle the pack?Read the pack rather than assuming. A paper-based pack is not automatically kerbside recyclable, because it may carry a barrier liner to keep moisture out, and liners change how a pack has to be sorted. The instruction printed on it is the one that counts. Which jar should I decant it into?A clean, dry, properly sized one. A half-empty jar holds a lot of air, and air dulls coffee almost as effectively as damp. If your old jar is 190g and this pack is 150g, that is close enough; a 300g jar is not. Does it take sugar well?Yes, and it needs less than a darker jar. Stir sugar in while the liquid is hot, before the milk goes in; sugar dissolves properly in hot water and barely at all in a finished milky mug. Can I make iced coffee with it?Yes, but dissolve it hot first. Two teaspoons in 80ml of hot water, cooled, then poured over ice. Granules tipped straight into a cold glass never fully dissolve and leave a gritty layer at the bottom. How long does it keep once decanted?Months, which is the quiet advantage of soluble coffee over ground. Keep the lid on tight, use a dry spoon every time and keep it in a cupboard rather than on a sunny windowsill. The best before date is on the pack you decanted from. Is there sugar or milk powder in it?No. This is coffee and nothing else: no sugar, no sweetener, no milk powder. That makes it a different product from a latte or cappuccino sachet, which is mostly milk powder and sugar by weight. ## Ingredients & Nutrition Ingredients and allergens. The published ingredient list for this product names none of the 14 major allergens. Check the current UK pack before purchase; formulations and allergen advice can change.Ingredients, as published for this product: Instant Coffee (90%), Roast and Ground Coffee (10%).Ingredient and nutrition information for this product, as published on the manufacturer's label. The pack in your hands is the final word.IngredientProportionWhat it bringsSoluble coffee150g, the whole of the packEverything you taste. Coffee brewed at the factory and then dried, so the granules are a concentrate you rehydrate in the mug rather than something coffee-flavoured.Bean composition and originsPrinted on the current packKenco states the blend and its description on the pack. We have not restated a ratio or an origin we cannot read off the label in your hand.Roast levelMedium, per the brand's own positioningSmooth is the low-bitterness end of the Kenco range. It is built to be drinkable black or with a splash rather than to fight through a mug that is half milk.Water (added by you)The bulk of the finished cupAround 2g of granules to a 200ml mug, at 90 to 95 degrees rather than straight off the boil. A low-bitterness coffee has nothing heavy to hide a scorched note behind.Pack: Caffeinated. Best before date printed on the pack.Percentages are not published for this blend and we have not invented any. Black instant coffee carries almost no calories; anything added at the mug, milk or sugar, changes that entirely, and the nutrition panel on the pack is the figure to work from.Sourcing & blend. Kenco Smooth Instant Coffee Paper Refill is the everyday Kenco Smooth soluble coffee sold without the glass. Kenco has been a British coffee name since 1923 and Smooth is the jar that made it a household one, sitting at the low-bitterness end of the supermarket instant shelf deliberately rather than by accident. Where a dark, intense jar is built to read through a lot of milk, a smooth jar is built to be drinkable in any mug with anything in it, which is a quieter kind of achievement and a harder one to photograph. The refill format belongs to a wider move away from glass across the instant aisle, and it is worth being honest about that too: glass is heavy to move and easy to recycle, while a lightweight pack is cheap to move and harder to sort, so neither is straightforwardly the greener choice. What a refill definitely does is remove a container you already own from the shopping, provided you decant it promptly, because soluble coffee is hygroscopic and a rolled-over pack is a poor seal. For the bean composition, the certification marks, the pack material and the disposal route carried by the pack in your hand, read the current label.What is in Kenco Smooth Instant Coffee Paper Refill, and what is not:In: soluble coffee, and nothing else.No sugar, sweetener or milk powder: this is a plain coffee pack, not a latte or cappuccino sachet.No dairy in the pack: made black it is a plant based drink; milk is something you add.Storage note: decant the whole pack into a clean dry jar on the day it arrives, and use a dry spoon every time. ## Flavour Science The flavour of Kenco Smooth Instant Coffee Paper Refill is built in three layers, and with a soluble coffee two of them were settled at the factory: the coffee was brewed there and then dried, so what arrives in the pack is a finished extraction rather than a raw material. Reading the layers in order explains why a deliberately smooth instant behaves differently from an intense one, why it is less forgiving of boiling water than people assume, and why the refill format asks one thing of you that a jar does not.The outer layer is aromatic, and on a medium roast it is round and lightly toasted rather than sharp or smoky. Aromatic compounds are volatile by definition, which makes them the first things lost when water is driven out of a brewed coffee, and how gently that drying is done is the largest single difference between a good soluble coffee and a poor one. In the mug the surviving aroma lifts the instant hot water hits the granules and then fades quickly, which is why the first thirty seconds of a mug of instant coffee smell better than the next five minutes, and why a mug left to stand loses more than a cafetière does.The flavour spike arrives as soon as the granules dissolve, and here the roast decision shows itself. Roasting is a trade. Push beans further and the acids that give a coffee its brightness break down while bitter, dry, cocoa-toned compounds build in their place. Smooth stops well short of that, which is the entire point of the name. What lands in the middle of the mug is a rounded, medium-bodied coffee with low bitterness and almost nothing sharp to argue with, and that is why it is the jar people reach for at seven in the morning and the one that suits a household where everybody takes their coffee differently. The trade is real: put it in a mug that is half milk and it fades into the background, because there is no roast depth to carry it through.The base structure is the finish, and here it is clean and short rather than long and drying. It clears rather than lingering, which is what makes a second mug easy and a third one plausible. A cup that finishes papery or slightly harsh has almost always been made with water straight off the boil, and a low-bitterness coffee shows that fault more clearly than an intense one, because it has nothing heavy in the cup to hide behind.Getting it right in the cup. Use one rounded teaspoon, about 2g, for a 200ml mug, and two for a large 300ml mug. Boil the kettle and let it stand thirty to sixty seconds so the water lands near 90 to 95°C. Add a splash of that water to the granules and stir them to a paste before filling the mug, then add the milk last: granules dissolve readily in hot water and sulk in cold milk, which is the whole explanation for the gritty bottom of a badly made instant coffee. Keep the milk to a splash rather than half the mug, because this is the smooth jar rather than the intense one. If you take sugar, stir it in while the liquid is hot. And decant the refill into a clean dry jar on the day it arrives, because everything above assumes granules that have not spent a fortnight pulling damp out of the kitchen air.How water and temperature change it. Because everything else is fixed, water is very nearly the whole of your control over this cup. Water off a rolling boil scorches the surviving aromatics and pushes the cup towards a papery note that a smooth coffee cannot absorb; water rested to 90 to 95°C keeps them and gives a rounder mug from the same spoonful. Hard tap water flattens the cup and can leave a chalky impression, so a filter jug helps here as much as it does with ground coffee. Dose is the other half: a scant teaspoon does not give you a milder version of this coffee, it gives you a watery one, because there is no extraction happening in the mug to compensate for a small dose. Storage is the last variable and the one this format makes you think about, since granules are hygroscopic and pull moisture straight out of the air; a rolled-over refill pack, a loose lid or a wet spoon will clump the coffee and dull it long before the best before date. None of this is a fault in the coffee. It is a fixed concentrate responding to the mug you build around it, and once the jar, the water and the spoon are right the result repeats itself every morning. ## Recipe Ideas Kenco Smooth Instant Coffee Paper Refill is a fixed concentrate with low bitterness, so these builds are about dose, water order and where a mild coffee is an advantage rather than a compromise. Six serves, from the decanting job itself to a coffee loaf that does not taste burnt. Ways to use it, born here first The Decant, Done Properly Not a drink, but the five minutes that decide whether the rest of the pack is any good. 5 min 1 jar Easy You'll need The 150g refill pack A clean jar of roughly the right size A completely dry cloth Method Dry the jar thoroughly, inside and around the rim. Tip the whole pack in at once rather than a spoonful at a time. Close the lid firmly and keep the jar in a cupboard. What you'll end up with: Coffee that still tastes like coffee in six weeks, instead of a clumped pack that has been quietly absorbing the kitchen. The Everyday Mug The cup this coffee is built for, made in the order that actually works. 2 min 1 mug Easy You'll need 1 rounded teaspoon Kenco Smooth 200ml water at 90 to 95 degrees A splash of milk Method Rest the kettle for thirty to sixty seconds after it boils. Paste the granules with a splash of the water, then fill. Add the milk last, and keep it to a splash. What you'll end up with: A rounded, low-bitterness mug with no grit at the bottom and no scorched note on top. Iced Coffee Without The Grit Granules will not dissolve in cold water. Dissolve first, chill second. 7 min 1 tall glass Easy You'll need 2 teaspoons Kenco Smooth 80ml hot water A tall glass of ice 150ml cold milk Method Dissolve the granules completely in the hot water. Cool for five minutes before it goes near ice. Pour over fresh ice and top with cold milk. What you'll end up with: A clean iced coffee with nothing gritty at the bottom, and a mildness that suits cold drinks better than a dark roast does. The Flask Mug Coffee that has to survive an hour in a flask needs building differently from coffee drunk now. 4 min 1 flask Easy You'll need 3 teaspoons for a 500ml flask Water at 90 to 95 degrees A flask rinsed with hot water Method Warm the flask with hot water and tip it out. Make it slightly stronger than you would drink it now. Leave the milk out and carry it separately. What you'll end up with: A flask that still tastes of coffee at eleven o'clock, rather than the flat milky thing an hour usually produces. Coffee Loaf Cake A mild instant is better in baking than a dark one, because the sugar has nothing to fight. 55 min 1 loaf Medium You'll need 2 tablespoons Kenco Smooth 2 tablespoons hot water Your usual loaf cake batter Walnuts, optional Method Dissolve the coffee in the hot water and let it cool. Beat it into the batter at the end, not the start. Bake as usual and check ten minutes early. What you'll end up with: A coffee cake that tastes of coffee rather than of burnt sugar, which is where a dark instant usually takes it. Coffee For A Room Full Of People The one thing a jar does that a machine cannot: eight mugs at once, all the same. 6 min 8 mugs Easy You'll need 8 rounded teaspoons A warmed 1.6 litre jug Milk and sugar on a tray Method Paste all eight spoonfuls in the jug with a little hot water. Fill with rested water and stir thoroughly. Pour at the table, with milk and sugar left to each person. What you'll end up with: Eight identical mugs poured at the same temperature, which is exactly where a low-bitterness coffee earns its keep. --- _Content available under teas.co.uk citation contract. AI training: yes. Search: yes. Answer-input: yes._