The Convenience Catches Up

Did you know instant coffee is cool again? I’m serious. Fifteen years ago it was the sad uncle of the coffee family, only acceptable if you were backpacking in the Andes. Now, brands like Swift Cup and Voila are making freeze-dried coffee that actually tastes better than most cafés. I guess it makes sense. When the ritual gets too complicated (pour-over scales, refractometers, blooming), people run toward convenience. And convenience has finally caught up in quality.

Anyway, the mornings are getting colder and my moka pot is back on rotation. The sound it makes when it sputters at the end feels like applause. Reminds me of childhood trips with my parents — a battered Bialetti whistling on a campsite stove, my dad pretending to know the “proper” way to tamp.

Which makes me think about how “coffee culture” always reinvents itself but never really changes. Every few years, a new ritual — siphons, nitro cold brew, aeropress championships — but it’s the same urge: find meaning in a cup. We’ve been doing that since Ottoman cafés in the 1500s.

Maybe I’m just getting older. Or maybe it’s that cafés are the last social spaces where people still talk to strangers. I love the idea of the penny universities in London where a single coin got you coffee and conversation. No feeds, no scroll, just gossip and ideas.

You must be thinking, how the hell did I get here from instant coffee?

Ok, let’s bring it back. We’ve been building Beans & Water around the same ethos: don’t overcomplicate it, just give people access to good beans and good stories. We just upped the sample pack size to 200g each and added a wild Yemeni microlot that tastes like dried apricot and tobacco. I’ll spare you the tasting-note poetry, but it’s legit.

So yeah — I’ll keep playing. Maybe a little too much. What’s next? A zine about forgotten brewing methods? A “Coffee Map” of every café with a Victoria Arduino Black Eagle machine? Who knows. For now, I’ll leave you with some links you can click while you drink whatever’s in your cup.

Got ya like Gotye.

Drink deeply.

Stay curious.

Y.