Douwe Egberts Pure Gold Instant Coffee, Medium Roast, 6.7-Ounce, 190g (Packaging May Vary)

If you have ever stayed in the Netherlands or even visited during a vacation, chances are you have had some Douwe Egberts coffee while you were there. This brand is a staple of the Dutch, and as the label depicts, the brand has been around for some 200 years. I was a bit skeptical when I saw this on Amazon as an instant, freeze-dried variant, but because I've had "the real thing" so many times, I wanted to give it a try. I'm very glad I did. This is the best instant coffee I've had, with the exception of "the other brand" which will point you toward financial ruin if you drink more than one cup a day. The taste is flavorful, and medium (they also make a dark roast, if you prefer that), with a wonderful aroma that is certainly half of the coffee experience. The coffee comes in the original glass jar that they have been using for years, with a rubberized plastic seal underneath the top of the glass handle (yes, the ENTIRE bottle is glass, other than the airtight seal itself), so nice that you will not want to throw it away when you are finished. The coffee dissolves instantly and effortlessly with just a few stirs, and you might be excused for thinking that it was an actual brewed coffee were you just to smell it without seeing it made. I'm so pleased to see Amazon selling it, and my only fear at this point is that it might be a temporary thing. Let's hope not. This is the perfect intersection of quality and price, and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you are not familiar with this brand because you have never been to Holland (more correctly, "the Netherlands;" "Holland" is a province within the Netherlands, although we often use the names interchangeably), and you have a need for instant coffee, run, don't walk, to buy either this one (a medium blend) or the darker roast variant. Five big Dutch Stars!

I've never been a coffee drinker until recently - and the coffee at Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts never appealed to me. But then I decided to find an instant decaf I would like, and after being very pleased with Douwe Egberts decaf, started ordering their pure gold medium roast regular coffee. Wow! I'm hooked.......especially when I combine it with the super-healthy raw organic cocoa powder I bought from Amazon, and a bit of almond milk. But it's delicious by itself........and better than the brewed coffee available at most coffee places. My guess is that this is indeed the best instant coffee available. Highly recommended! (And if you combine it with raw cocoa for a rich mocha taste, it will last longer too!) (Later: While I still find this to be the best instant coffee available, I am now very annoyed by the constant price increase. Very soon after I signed up for subscribe and save money, the subscribe and price went up full 30%. And now I see, for the next month, that it's going up another 30%. That's a 60% increase in two months - from around $12 to almost $20. This is NOT OK! I will be looking for other sources for this delicious coffee.)

This is easily the best instant coffee I've ever bought and I wish I could give it 10 stars. I like a strong tasting coffee but that usually just gives me a bitter brew that needs cream to make it drinkable. This coffee though, tastes thoroughly and strongly like coffee but with no bitterness or overpoweringness. I've tried various methods of brewing and brands of coffee in the past, and due to current living situation have been using instant coffee. But since I found this brand, I don't see any reason to ever stop using instant even when I move into my own home. The closest I've found to a con is that it was so wonderful when I first tried it, I kept making more and ended up drinking way way too much coffee. I was just so happy to be drinking flavorful coffee that didn't make my stomach hurt. So I got a little wired when it first got here, but seriously - I'm in love with this stuff (and while my reviews tend to be mostly positive in nature, I've never been so over the top before lol).