Travel coffee 3: Georgia European Black (iced) coffee

Another day, another coffee from a coffee machine. Once again the place where we stayed didn't have coffee at breakfast (except Nescafe...), so I made the most of a brief stop at a station to try a different vending machine coffee.

I made a bit of a mistake when buying the 140 yen coffee - I forgot to check that it was hot, and it turned out that it wasn't. Oh well, never mind - I'd had iced coffee before, and I'd even tried cold brew recently.

Although I've had iced coffee before, I've not had it black - and in my memory, iced coffee is often rather creamy and quite sweet. As a black coffee, I was interested to see how this would be.

Opening the screw top, I was surprised to note that it had an aroma like iced coffee. I almost assumed that it was, and that I'd made a mistake, but looking in it was definitely black. The initial aroma was sweetish, with a bit of dark chocolate.

On first taste, it was slightly sweeter than expected. Now it struck me that the label says "European" (and as I understand it, there are other options - so European is a type), so I wondered if this was meant to be descriptive. Perhaps this was their interpretation of European coffee - as opposed to, say, American. With that in mind, it made a little more sense to me - the European coffee that I know (Northern European, at least!) is smooth, balanced, and not too bitter, just like this can of coffee was.

No sooner had I thought that then I suddenly felt like I was drinking a cold cup of coffee at a hotel somewhere in Europe, which was then a bit mentally disappointing. I often find coffee in France and Germany to be a bit poor, and to have it cold...

But this was primarily mental. The coffee was pretty good for the £1 it cost, and I could be pretty happy that it was better than many I would get in the UK. And, to boot, I bought it from a vending machine; or, as they sometimes say here in Japan, a 'bending' machine.

Additional footnote

I was trying to find the caffeine content of the coffee in the can by looking at the label. Now, I don't read Japanese (or speak it) but certain foreign words I can get. And although I couldn't find the caffeine (I was looking for 'mg' somewhere other than in the nutrition information), I saw some percentages.

It turns out that this blend is 26% Colombian, 25% Brasilian, and 25% Guatemalan. I'm not sure what the remaining 24% is, but that's encouraging. There was also no sign of whether it was Arabica or Robusta beans, but it was more than I thought I'd get!