Episode Notes

Alicia and I discuss Moccona, a freeze-dried instant coffee we both enjoy.

Welcome to Conversations with Kerry, a series of audio interactions with people and things in my world that I find interesting. If you have any comments, queries, questions, or feedback, you can find me as at K-H-O-A-T-H on Twitter, or email me [email protected]. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the podcast.

Welcome, everybody, to this episode of Conversations with Kerry and day four of ADHD medication. Can we tell there is actually podcasts on a reasonably regular schedule? So here's another episode, and I have invited along this time the delightful, ineffable Alicia, welcome.

Thank you. What kind of word was anyway?

Ineffable. It means to look that one up.

Awesome

Yeah. We have to get a definition for ineffable. As you can hear, she's had quite the audio upgrade from last time. If anybody who's been following my podcast for some time, original podcast we had her on was the Doc and Alicia Fun with Hypnosis podcast, episode 15? I believe it was episode 15. And if anybody has any feedback, comments, would you like to see more of Alicia or less of Alicia on the podcast?

I don't know if I want the answer to that.

Well, maybe not. I would like to see more of her on the podcast because I love podcasting with people. It's fun. We're up here on Riverside on Sunday, the 3 October 2021, and I put that on just because so many of my recordings don't have dates on them. And then I go back and listen to them later and sort of go, when did that happen? So here we are today. We're talking about Moccona coffee, or we're talking about coffee. Now, I've had some interesting experiences with coffee. Coffee, when I used to drink a lot of it when I was younger, would cause me quite bad reflux. And we'll come back to that thought in a minute. And in fact, when I have been to America, and I've been to America four times, which is where Alicia is from, their coffee is made in pots and French presses. Well, how did you used to make your coffee? Actually, as a case in point, just-

You know, pot or keurig.

Pot or keurig. Okay, so bit of keurig coffee, bit of pot coffee. Take a few cups out of the pot throughout the day. That's a common thing

No, not throughout the day. Yuck.

Okay. Just in breakfast. Okay.

Well, I mean, if you're I'm not opposed to having coffee throughout the day. What I'm saying is you make a fresh pot of it because letting it sit in the pot and then getting it later and heating it up in the microwave.

There are people who do subscribe to this, I'll believe. Abomination.

That's the problem. It is an abomination. Yes, I know. That is no, not you.

Okay. All right. So we have a coffee connoisseur in.

Our midst, which is that's kind of funny. I'll tell you why later, but anyway okay, no worries.

So you used to drink either keurig coffee or pot coffee. Now, for people who aren't in the US. Keurig is one of those. Actually, I think it ends with a G. Keurig.

Yeah, it is. K-E-U-R-I-G-I believe Keurig.

Okay. Keurig coffee is one of the American coffee pod systems. So if you want to make a lot of okay coffee quickly with minimum fuss, many people default to a keurig. They probably shouldn't, but it's convenience over yum.

I was going to say I believe kind of where that trend got going was for offices. Initially, people would have the keurig, paper cups, sugar packets, creamers, there's your coffee station with a minimum of mess. You weren't pouring out of a pot, you weren't making a bunch. And then either having too many people try to get coffee and there wasn't enough, or vice versa, you'd make a pot that doesn't get gone because you'd have those really big industrial, commercial office size pots. So I think that's kind of where they got started, was in offices, because someone could just make their own the way they wanted it, minimal mess. There you have it, and it ended up migrating into everybody's homes.

Interestingly enough, and this reminds me of the inkjet printer on every desk that we used to have in offices. Like, I can't use the main printer, so I will have an inkjet on my desk. So keurig was the solution to that for coffee, because certain smaller offices would have a keurig in them rather than having a building coffee machine. Yeah, okay. No, that's all very interesting. I have had keurig coffee.

It's not that great, in my opinion.

It goes from blur to not so bad, basically. Yeah. If you want coffee and you have to have coffee and you're in a hurry, give me coffee now. Keurig. No problem. All right, so what was the problem with coffee for you? I remember you talking to me earlier in the year and just you can't drink as much coffee as you like.

Yeah, well, backing that up for a second, just because I'm amused by you calling me a coffee connoisseur. I did not start drinking coffee till this 2015, so until I was 35 years old. I always loved the smell of it when I was growing up. I mean, I loved how coffee smelled, and I even because I liked the smell, I wanted to like the drink, and I never did. I used to say it tasted like water with dirt in it. Yes, I said that for years.

A lot of people think that. And I was introduced to coffee when I was five, just as an interesting counterpoint, but I actually drank it. I was in the paddock, and I'm like, what have we got? And they've got, well, we've got water and we've got coffee. And I said, well, can I please have some coffee? And so they poured me a cup and you're not really supposed to give coffee to five year olds, but no, this was 1981 and the world was a different place. And I remember drinking coffee and tea at age six, which was quite a surprise to a lot of the people who were adults at the time, sort of saying, are you allowed this? Yes. Would you like to call my mum? Oh, no, we'll give it to you. Yeah.

I thought it tasted like water with dirt in it. And I always said that for years. And people always said, oh, when you go to college and you start doing all nighters and staying awake doing homework, you'll acquire taste for it. Nope. When you work full time, you'll acquire taste for it. No. It actually took my now late husband getting cancer in 2015 and me only being able to sleep for about 4 hours at a stretch at one point, that I'm just like, oh, my God, caffeine, caffeine, I need it. And it became initially a battlefield necessity, and I put about as much cream and sugar in it as the thing could hold. People used to tease me, that wasn't coffee, that was dessert. And I knew I was actually getting to like coffee when it was like, oh, that's too much cream and sugar. So let's cut back on it. Let's cut back some more. That's too much. Oh, there's none in here. Okay.

So, not quite what we're getting into in this podcast, but an interesting jump off point for another one. Isn't it fascinating how experience and circumstance alters our likes and dislikes without going into any further information on that

No, it's okay.

But that's when I finally started drinking it, then acquired a taste for it, like everyone told me for the past 20 some OD years that I would.

Yeah. And essentially for you, it was a case of needs must when the devil drives.

Yeah, it was basically battlefield necessity at that point, but it turned into yum yum and became something I enjoyed, not just something I needed.

Okay, but you were saying at the beginning of the year that you couldn't drink as much of it as you wanted to

Yeah, I lived on it from about 2015 through the middle of 2018, and it was fine. And yes, American coffee, but we actually got the good stuff, not folders or Maxwell House, because yuck. But anyway, I could drink it just fine. And then in the latter half of 2018, it really started messing with my acid reflux. You mentioned reflux earlier and to the point where it didn't matter what else I put in it, people are like, oh, cut it with milk, do this, do this. No, reflux city. And I actually had to, for a while, stop drinking it altogether. By the way, the caffeine withdrawal headaches are hell rival any migraine. Oh, my God. There was about a year and some where I didn't drink it at all, or if I was going to, I kind of paid for it.

Yeah. Now, fascinatingly enough, without getting into too much, caffeine is one of the most common over the counter stimulants consumed by the world's population.

Absolutely.

I don't think anybody would argue that point. And so many people. Partake of tea, coffee, various other drinks, mountain Dew is yeah, I agree. Is often inhaled by programmers for focus and things like that. Okay. So I was messing with acid reflux, and in fact, I remember talking to you towards the beginning of the year and saying, do you drink coffee? Because we were getting to know each other and we were talking about everything and do you drink coffee? Was one of the important questions that came up.

Absolutely. This is a make or break thing.

Or no kidding, it is. And I mean, obviously we haven't gone into which audiobook Narrators do you like because that's when the fight started. But we did ask about coffee, and you had said that it had messed with your reflux, and as most people in the world do, you had a birthday. And I had discussed the instant coffee that I drink. Now, my experience with most Americans, as soon as you say instant coffee, the response is yuck.

And that was mine.

Instant coffee is it's like white chocolate is to chocolate. Instant coffee is to coffee if you speak to the serious coffee drinkers. And I had said to Alicia that I thought that instant coffee, as far as Moccona was concerned, was actually not a bad instant coffee as far as instant coffees were concerned. So I bought Alicia a jar of it for her birthday, and it was a little jar. That was the first little jar of Moccona you ordered off Amazon. How did you find I remember being with you the first time you made some up.

When Kerry was first talking about instant coffee, my reaction was Blair, because I have tried it over the years, even after I started liking coffee, and just no, but I also know that Carrie's not just going to drink lousy coffee. So if he was saying this was good, then I knew that despite my own skepticism, I should trust his judgment on that one. So he bought me some of this. And by the way, it comes in this saying jar, because most coffee I don't know about over there in Australia, but in the States comes in cans or you can get vacuum packed bags of it. This comes in a glass jar, which I personally think is cool. I like the glass jar. So he ordered it for me for my birthday, told me how specifically how he makes it because we both like cream and sugar. They'll milk and sugar in it and described the meticulousness with which that is made. Kerry, you remember, like, the measurements and things you should describe how you do this.

I do actually recall because one of the things I have discovered with having people experience foods and drinks is it's very important that somebody gets the best experience that they can have with a food and drink. So it was important to me that if Alicia was going to order Moccona and have Moccona, that we actually give her the best experience possible. So my method of making Moccona and I realize that this will cause dissent and outrage in the global community as I talk about this, this is how I make mine: One teaspoon of Moccona granules, two teaspoons of sugar, about maybe a quarter inch of milk. Stir the resulting syrup around until as much of the ingredients dissolve in that milk solution, and then top the rest of it up with hot water and give it a good stir to make sure everything is mixed in.

Yes. Well, I should back this up a little bit. Carrie has turned me onto two things in the coffee arena, one of them being the Moccona of which we are speaking, the other being turbinato sugar. I had never heard of that either.

Yes. Now, turbinato sugar, for anybody who doesn't know, is a less processed version of sugar that you can get in America. We can't get it over here because our sugar processing is different. Don't confuse turbinado sugar with raw sugar, because there is a difference. But I had said that if Alicia wanted to up level her coffee, she should consider turbanado sugar.

It is not brown sugar, and it's not quite the texture of that either, but it's not the really fine, almost sandy texture of standard white sugar. It's somewhere in between is the only way I can describe it on the spectrum. Tends to smell and feel a little bit more like brown sugar, but not quite.

You can tell it doesn't have the stickiness of brown sugar. Actually.

There must be less of the molasses in there or whatever. We could certainly look that up on Wikipedia if anybody wants to know. Did you have the Turbinato sugar at the same time as the Moccona? I think you did, yes,

Already ordered it for other things. I made coffee, like just my caribou blend that I like, and just try the sugar itself and discover the sugar was amazing. But I still had the coffee problem because he still had the reflux problem, hence the ordering of Moccona. So, yeah, I was talking to Carrie on Team Talk and made this. I don't like quite as much sugar as you do but I did the milk coffee sugar solution that you're talking about and poured and stirred the hot water. I don't have a cool electric kettle like he does. He has a smart kettle. I do not. I wish I did, but right now I just have the copper kind that you just put on the stove and so pour that. Stir, stir, stir. And this stuff is actually pretty freaking good. Yeah, it really is. For instant coffee. It's pretty amazing.

The really amazing thing is it does not bother my reflux. I'm sure if I had a ton of it in a day it could, but I can have say two cups spread apart a little bit and no reflux problem whatsoever. So this has officially solved my I need caffeine problem without the I have heartburn problem, which excellent, makes very much happier me. Yes, better living through Moccona and turbinato sugar.

There you go. There you go. But interestingly enough, and just to sort of wind back just a little bit. So given the situation we're all in at the moment with the Rona and stuff, we're still in the times of Rona, we were actually up on Team Talk together, having coffee at the same time together as a shared experience because with people being encouraged to go out less and basically the global population encouraged to stay home, sit inside, whatever, limit your exposure. And it was a fun thing to do. We actually both made Moccona coffee simultaneously and tried it and that was one of those bonding experiences. So I mean, just for future reference, are we talking about one and a fraction of sugar or are we talking just like how much sugar do you think you put in?

Probably a fairly like a teaspoon, a little more than a teaspoon. Like a heaping teaspoon. I guess it'd be milk and heaps one. Yeah, basically.

Okay.

And also as an interesting note, we did the reason that I'm awake to record this podcast at 12:48 a.m. US time, central US time, is that we actually did the Making Moccona simultaneously thing about 4 hours ago.

Yes, I may or may not have encouraged her a little bit, but here we are. And that's why this podcast is being mastered at this time. We got distracted talking to a group on Team Talk and then came across here to record this. But it is fascinating to introduce a beverage or a food supply item to somebody who hasn't had it before and join them on the journey of discovery. Especially when the journeys of discovery are good ones.

I see a lot of YouTube videos where they give Americans vegemite on a spoon and I'm personally not down for that because we don't eat our vegemite off a spoon. We have far less vegemite. So it was interesting to get her some Moccona and have her experience it. And I am happy that it is something that you enjoy. So for anybody who drinks coffee, wants to drink coffee, has reflux problems, please consider Moccona. It's a little bit pricey in the US. As an interesting case in point. I usually bring a couple of jars of it across to the US. When I come over because we get it so much cheaper than you guys get it over there. And in fact, you can get a cheap jar and bring that over. And in fact, you can get a big tin, which is actually a 500 grams tin. It's bit over a pound of Moccona. They're the sort of caterer's tins. So the regular sizes are little jar, medium jar, medium large jar, big jar. And then once you go above the big jar, you get to cater as tins. And I also have seen the Moccona in vacuum pack as well.

Over here, I saw the tins you're talking about because you said 500 grams. They are about $40 on Amazon.

They're about $30 here, so they're still pricey. So about $10 cheaper. Because I think the Wikipedia article I read said you get Moccona in Australia and the Dominican Republic of all places.

That's interesting. Speaking of getting it in Australia, I actually have had fun explaining this to several people who have known that I couldn't drink coffee because of reflux. I griped about that on social media multiple times in 2018, 19 and part of 20 and 20 off and on as well. So people knew I couldn't have it and well could, but paid the penalty for it. And so people are like, oh, you can have coffee. What kind? You know, I want to get some. And I'm like, actually this is kind from Australia. And it's always fun then to explain what it is, how I heard about it, why like it that, yes, you can get it in the US. No, you can't buy it on the grocery store because it's Australian import. So grocery stores don't have it. But it's just it's just fun watching people when they learn that you are drinking this Australian coffee.

And that's an interesting phenomena as well. When Americans become involved with Australians, for whatever reason, it is interesting to see bits of our culture intertwine. There are certain American things that I will eat, like Oreos, because we can get those over here. And Pop Tarts were originally American, I believe. And it's interesting to see you get Moccona coffee. So there's also that side story of I am talking to an Australian being online and whatever else, and he was the one to get me into the Moccona coffee. So that's an interesting link off there.

But it is interesting watching people's reactions when you explain it. Yes, and I don't know if any of my friends have actually ordered it. I know people, some of them have thought about it because they also have reflux problems, but it is quite tasty. It is unlike any coffee I have had before, but maybe you have descriptors to put on flavor and all that stuff. My words are failing me here as I'm trying to think about how to describe it.

Okay, so I think one of the first things I describe about Moccona is coffee is prepared in many different ways. And I believe that Moccona is an extract from the coffee beans. I'm not exactly sure what they do to it, but it is freeze dried. So that's interesting to see how it's freeze dried. And it basically comes in the glass jars, as we've discussed, or the tins or the vacuum packs, depending on what you're looking for. And when you scoop it into the cup, it's a very light, granule substance that you actually spoon into the cup.

But it's not as fine as, like, a lot of the ground coffee over here.

No, it's coarse granules.

Yeah, it's coarse granules. Not kind of the sandy fine ones that you'd see a lot of. Yes, they're quite large granules. So when you actually spoon it into the cup, it's a different sound when it drops in. I wouldn't want to explain taste, necessarily, because there are different blends. So there's MOCCA Kenya, there's Espresso, there's I'm not sure which one you get.

Just the medium roast. That's what we don't have. The varieties that you do over there, you have, like, the whole barista's choice. You have a lot of that kind of thing. Basically, what I see on Amazon are the medium roast, dark roast, and some of the flavored ones that come in the little sachets. But most commonly it's the medium roast or the dark roast that's available.

Yeah. And now, generally over here yes. So you have the jars of Moccona and you have the vacuum packs of Moccona and the tins of Moccona. There are also boxes of ten sachets or 15 sachets, or depending on the size of the sachet with one sachet makes up a drink. And some of them, most of them, I think, have milk powder in with the sachets. So you essentially mix those up with water that's close to boiling, and you get your drink, your latte, or whatever the sachet is. Now, I've tended to find that the espresso form of Moccona is very bitter and it has a very intense flavor, and some people absolutely like that. I find that the medium roast works well for me, and that's the one I tend to drink. So there is variety there. But for people who are having trouble with reflux and you want caffeine from a hot beverage such as coffee, do consider Moccona. It's an interesting option for scratching that itch. Or fulfilling that need. I'm glad that we get to drink the same coffee. It just make up two cups of Moccona.

It does. It does always help when two people like the same kind of coffee.

That's right. You don't have to have two different scents on the bench. That's certainly a thing. So it will be interesting to see how that goes. But I'm very glad that you are enjoying Moccona and that I could introduce it. And it has worked so well for you.

I'm very glad and I'm sure people around me are very glad I could have caffeine again.

I hear Alicia make it up in the morning, and it makes my heart happy. It's like, yes, that's one of the things that I've introduced, one of my hobbies. When permitted and desired, I like to find things that will up level aspects of people's lives if they're down for it. Now, if they're not, absolutely not. But, yeah, if we can get caffeine in there and make the world a better place, do those sorts of things, that makes me happy to be able to show these things off to people.

I tease him that basically my cup of coffee at this point is his design between the sugar and the coffee, neither of which I knew about at the beginning of 2021. Yes, this makes me quite happy.

Excellent. Excellent. All right, so if anybody's got any comments, queries or questions about any of this, @ K-H-O-A-T-H on Twitter and [email protected]. Happy to answer them, and we can certainly answer any questions that we've got about that. And I'd to thank you for coming on the podcast you're welcome. This afternoon, because it is this afternoon morning for you, yes. And very much appreciate your input and stuff there. So any comments, queries, questions, guys? If you got any, do let me know. Thanks for listening and hope you enjoyed the podcast. Bye.

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