Originally published at: This bean-less coffee sounds surprisingly good | Boing Boing
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…aaand $5 a can. Yeah, I’ll just stick with the instant/powdered/decaf grain-based coffee alternatives.
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$5 a can and they’re using waste from other processes? It’s a cool idea, but not for that price.
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If reducing environmental impact is the goal, wouldn’t it be better sold in bags to be brewed at home? But I guess they’re trying to replace existing coffee in a can products.
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Chicory, eh? In WW2, with coffee in short supply, Brits turned to Camp Coffee, a concentrated syrup made of chicory and (4%) coffee essence (yes, some Brits had heard of coffee before Starbucks emerged in 1998).
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That’s like a laundry list of all of the crappiest “healthy” substitutes people convince themselves don’t taste like crap or are somehow better for the environment to ship across the globe. I don’t even really care for coffee, but I understand that coffee isn’t just about the caffeine and cannot be substituted.
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I’m not sure about side stepping the roasting processes, because on their website they say they roast it?
How is it made?
Just like coffee. We roast and ferment our ingredients and then cold brew into Minus Coffee.
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Where is the caffeine coming from? Are they just adding it?
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Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call it coffee-less coffee?
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The local coffee roasters in Carlisle existed for a century before Starbucks started in the US.
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Yes. FAQ – Minus Coffee
What is natural caffeine?
Our caffeine is extracted from tea leaves
How much caffeine does it contain?
100 mg per 8.4oz
(I’m not trying to promote them or anything. I just like information, and finding out more about stuff 
)
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Seems that way to me, since carob is a bean.
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“Minus Coffee gives you that legendary coffee taste…”
but then
“It was hard to detect any discernible coffee flavor…”
MINUS, indeed.
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“And then we brew it with a process as close as possible to traditional coffee.”
Sounds like their process requires something beyond consumers’ capabilities. Maybe along the lines of 10,000 psig at 725F for 80 hours?
too many ingredients. i prefer something simpler, like coffee beans and water.
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The real magic trick would be to develop a socially-acceptable, reasonably-priced narcotic with readily-neglected side effects, amirite?
Subsituting six agrictulural products for one isn’t a whole lot of sidestepping.
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I’m all for alternative products when it makes sense, but this seems to be trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
Two things.
The first thing that all these ingredients appear to have in common is that they’re a lot cheaper than coffee.
Secondly, a not-coffee drink that tastes similar but not quite like coffee wasn’t always a trendy new ting that people paid a lot for:
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If they want to make coffee less environmentally destructive why don’t they work with local communities in the developing world who rely on coffee exports for a living. Help them grow coffee more sustainably and to process the beans so that they get a greater share of the added value when coffee is fermented and roasted.
But I guess claiming to have reinvented ersatz coffee and selling it at a hefty markup will look better in the pages of WIRED.
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