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An acceptable-tasting and quick caffeine hit does not have to also hit your back pocket, according to a new ranking of instant coffees.
A Consumer NZ panel blind-taste tested nine brands, and while there was a general correlation between price and quality, one brand bucked the trend.
While the two top-ranked flavours were the most expensive, they were hardly better than Pam's Café Roast Instant Coffee - a supermarket budget brand that cost a lot less.
"I think I'm probably the chief coffee snob at Consumer New Zealand," Ruairi O'Shea told Checkpoint on Friday. "I've got a machine at home. I try and avoid instant coffee if I can help it, but you never know when you're gonna have to dip in."
And if you do, and want the best, Consumer recommends Robert Harris Colombian Blend - which was described as actually tasting "like coffee" and the "best of a bad bunch".
Second place went to Nescafe Gold Original, which was described as having a "coffee-style whiff" and "inoffensive coffee taste".
But if you want to save money, the Pam's costs just a quarter of those two - and at $3.19 per 100g, significantly less than Coffee Supreme Instant, which was priced at over $76 per 100g.
"Pam's Cafe Roast was the second-cheapest coffee that we taste-tested, but it was the third-highest scoring coffee when it came to taste and it was pretty marginal.
"So if you're looking to save, save your pennies in the cost of living crisis, Pam's Cafe Roast gives you kind of around in and amongst the best taste."
Something the lesser instant coffees lacked was an actual coffee taste.
"Kind of the further down we go… we realised that that coffee taste is not something to take for granted."
But even the best instant coffee - a New Zealand invention - was still a long way off fooling real coffee connoisseurs, O'Shea said.
"Instant coffee is maybe quite far away from developing the perfect flat white. You can add boiling water to it, might be all right with a long black."
Coming in last was Countdown Granulated Instant Coffee, which Consumer NZ panellists said "looks like coffee, but can't be coffee"; "like a very cheap motel sachet from the '90s" and having an "odd, funky taste".
The full results can be read on the Consumer NZ website.