Top Instant Coffee Brands with Chicory

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chicory coffee and beignets in New Orleans
New Orleans is famous for its bold coffee with chicory, which goes well with beignets!

by Lars H

If you’ve ever been to New Orleans, you’ve probably tried their famous style of coffee that is a mix of coffee beans and chicory root. The blend of dark roast beans and chicory root gives it a rich, earthy flavor with notes of chocolate and nuts. The addition of chicory root is a unique aspect of New Orleans coffee, and it is believed to have been added to coffee in the city as a way to stretch scarce coffee supplies during times of scarcity or economic hardship.

Believe it or not, you can also buy instant coffee brands that have chicory root, which makes it easy to get a nice and bold cup of New Orleans style coffee without having to brew an entire pot.

Here are some of the brands I found. Did I miss anything? Which is your favorite?

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Fabula Coffee: The Very Best Clean, Organic, Single Origin Decaf Coffee?

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by Lars H

Fabula decaf coffee bag and the whole beans in a hopper
Here’s what the Fabula decaf clean coffee package and whole beans looks like.

If you’re looking for decaf coffee, your choices can be limited. Add in clean (tested for mycotoxins and pesticides), organic, Swiss Water Process and single origin, and you’re unlikely to find one type of coffee that has all of these things. At least that’s what I thought until I ran into Fabula coffee.

My previous favorite decaf coffee came from Kauai Coffee. It is a very tasty coffee, but it is not organic, unfortunately. So I decided to give Fabula decaf a try. I was surprised to find that I like it just as much. In fact, it has become my new favorite, and is the current brand that goes through my dedicated decaf super automatic GE Profile machine.

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Avoiding the Kona Coffee Blend Scam

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10 percent hawaiian coffee
Kauai medium roast coffee beans that are just 10% Hawaiian

by Lars H

I was recently burned TWICE on Amazon, fooled into purchasing what seemed to be very reasonably priced bags of Kona whole bean coffee.

Instead of buying bags of 100 percent coffee beans that are Kona, it turned out that I had purchased bags of coffee that were really just blends that had a small or unstated percentage of Kona beans, mixed with other coffee beans grown elsewhere.

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Is Organic Coffee Healthier?

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Java Planet organic medium roast coffee package with beans loaded into the espresso machine hopper
Java Planet organic medium roast coffee package and beans

QUESTION: My wife will only drink organic coffee because she says it’s healthier. Is she right? Is organic coffee healthier? — Evan K.

CLEARLY COFFEE REPLIES: Yes, organic coffee is without a doubt healthier for you than conventional coffee. Let’s take a look at all the ways that organic coffee wins out when it comes to healthiness. 

The organic farming standards that organic coffee is held to require a limited use of synthetic chemicals and restricted use of herbicides, pesticides, and artificial fertilizers. Because the soil doesn’t contain synthetic chemicals, organic coffee is likely to contain more vitamins and nutrients than conventional coffee.

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Whataburger Coffee Review for 2023

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cup of black whataburger coffee
Cup of fresh, black Whataburger coffee from the drive through.

by Lars H

Wondering how the coffee tastes at Whataburger restaurants? Here’s a review.

I recently bought a cup of black coffee at a Whataburger fast food hamburger restaurant in Dallas. This was my first time trying a cup of joe at a Whataburger fast food restaurant.

The coffee was plenty hot, and it came in a styrofoam cup to keep it warm. If you care about hot coffee that’s great, but if you don’t like to buy styrofoam materials, then it’s not. But this also applies to their regular drinks, so it’s just the way it is at Whataburger and most of their customers are used to this.

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Dripkit Pour Over Coffee (Variety Pack) Review

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dripkit pour over box

by Lars H

While I was recently doing some research on instant coffees, I learned about Dripkit, which was coincidentally listed in some places as an instant coffee. Indeed, all you need is hot water and a cup to make it.

But Dripkit isn’t freeze dried coffee like a true instant coffees. It’s regular ground coffee that’s in a ready-to-go cardboard and paper pour over device that you rip open, unfold, and sit over your cup. Next, you pour hot water from a pot, tea kettle or gooseneck coffee kettle over the grounds and wait for it to make your coffee.

So it’s just as convenient as instant coffee except that it’s real, brewed coffee that you can take with you and quickly make anywhere you can get hot water and a coffee cup.

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Houndstooth Coffee Shop on Sylvan in Dallas, an Architectural Favorite

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Houndstooth coffee shop exterior view, on Sylvan

by Lars H

There are multiple Houndstooth coffee shop locations in the Dallas area, and one of them is only a couple of miles from my home. But my wife and I drove several miles further to visit the shop on Sylvan after I read that Architectural Digest named it the most beautiful coffee shop in Texas.

We were there before 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, so the morning crowd still had not appeared. The two employees gave us a friendly greeting as we walked inside.

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