Nescafé Gold Blend Intense: The Dark Jar for Milky Mugs

Intense is the jar for the person who keeps sneaking an extra spoonful into an ordinary instant. Its depth comes from a darker roast before drying, and that changes how it should be made: a lighter hand with the spoon and a more generous one with the milk.

Where the darkness comes from

Every jar of instant is brewed and dried before it reaches you, so the differences between jars come down to how dark the beans were roasted and how the brew was dried. A longer roast browns more of the bean's sugars into caramelised, bittersweet flavours, and those carry colour and weight into the brew. Freeze drying then keeps them without adding the scorched note that hot-air drying can bring.

The result is the darkest reading of the Gold Blend line: toasted and bittersweet, with something close to burnt sugar and cocoa on the nose, a full body and a long finish that dries a little at the back. Because it is freeze dried it stays clean rather than harsh, but nobody should expect a soft cup from this jar.

Intense, the standard jar or Smooth?

Picture the standard, Smooth and Intense jars as points along one line. The standard jar sits in the middle, smooth and gentle on bitterness. Smooth sits at the soft end and is built for drinking black or with a small splash of milk. Intense sits at the far end, and it is the one to choose if you pour milk generously, because it has the roast weight to still taste of coffee underneath.

It is also worth trying if you take sugar. The dark roast brings its own caramelised sweetness forward ahead of the bitterness, and some drinkers find the spoonful of sugar has little left to do. For a softer mug later in the day, Smooth or one of the brand's decaf instants makes more sense than this caffeinated heavyweight.

Dosing a dark jar

With a dark instant, most of the bitterness hides in the difference between a level spoon and a heaped one. Start with one rounded teaspoon, about 1.8g, in 200ml of water, and for a long black let that same spoonful cover 250ml. At that measure the 190g jar gives roughly 105 mugs, and because people tend to use less of a dark coffee, it often outlasts a lighter jar.

Water temperature matters more here than with a gentler coffee. Let the kettle stand for about thirty seconds so the water arrives at around 90 to 95 degrees; a full boil lays a scorched note over the roast, and the two together turn the cup harsh. Dissolve the granules in the water first, then add the milk, and be as generous with it as you like.

The packs we stock

• Nescafe Gold Blend Intense Instant Coffee, 190g (barcode 8445291847002)

What to eat with it

• McVitie's Digestives Dark Chocolate Biscuits, 433g: Dark chocolate against a dark roast, and a digestive is sturdy enough for a quick dip in a milky mug.
• Maryland Cookies Caramel & Chocolate Chip, 200g: The caramel in the cookie picks up the burnt-sugar note that the roast brings to the cup.
• Border Butterscotch Crunch Organic Biscuits, 135g: Buttery butterscotch sweetness to set against a bitter, full-bodied coffee.

Elsewhere in the Nescafé range

• Nescafe Azera Americano Decaff Instant Coffee, 90g
• Nescafe Azera Americano Instant Coffee, 140g
• Nescafe Azera Americano Intense Instant Coffee with Finely Ground Beans, 140g
• Nescafe Azera Decaf Americano Instant Coffee with Finely Ground Beans, 135g
• Nescafe Cappuccino Decaf Unsweetened Taste Instant Coffee Sachets, 7 Sachets 105g
• Nescafe Cappuccino Instant Coffee, 7 Sachets

The full range is on the Nescafé brand page.

FAQ

Is Gold Blend Intense stronger than standard Gold Blend? It tastes stronger because the roast is darker and heavier. How concentrated your mug is still depends on the spoon.

Why does my Intense taste bitter? Usually a heaped spoon or water at a full boil. Go back to one rounded teaspoon and rest the kettle for half a minute.

Is it good with milk? It is the Gold Blend jar best suited to it. The roast weight holds up under a generous pour where lighter jars fade away.

Why does a jar of Intense last longer than expected? People tend to dose a dark coffee lightly, so the 190g jar often goes past its roughly 105 mugs at a rounded teaspoon of about 1.8g.

Curator's note: Give it a week without sugar before you decide anything. The dark roast does more of the sweetening than people expect, and plenty of milky-mug drinkers find they do not miss the spoonful. Lee, teas.co.uk, Tunbridge Wells.

In short: Nescafé Gold Blend Intense: The Dark Jar for Milky Mugs

More from the tea wiki

• Nescafé: The Instant Coffee Benchmark
• Tea vs Coffee: Taste, Caffeine and Switching
• Caffeine in Tea
• Tea vs Coffee
• Tea for Coffee Drinkers: Where to Start
• Chai vs Coffee
• Best Instant Coffee UK

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