Whenever I shop at the Royal Subic store at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, I always stock up on coffee. I only shop there once a month, so you can imagine how much of any particular item I might buy at one time.

The problem I have is that when I enter the store's coffee and tea aisle, I tend to get stuck there, ogling all the different brands and kinds of coffee (and sometimes tea). I'm talking about everything from automatic drip coffee to canned coffee, locally produced and imported. Apparently, I'm not the only coffee lover to get stuck there at times because at least two other people were in the aisle, looking at coffee, for as long as I was. One of them was still there when I exited.

Café Time Coffee

Since I have a monthly food (and drink) budget that isn't very flexible, the only thing I can really do is taste test anything other than the coffee I normally stock up on. This time was the first time I saw this particular brand of canned coffee on the shelf.

Café Time Coffee is produced by the Apex Food Company out of Taipei, Taiwan. I bought two flavors, the french roast and the espresso. I checked out the ingredients before buying: Water, coffee, sugar and powdered milk. There's nothing unusual to be wary of.

I have since finished off both cans. The french roast tasted exactly like french roast should, but the espresso wasn't nearly as strong as I thought it would be. The cost was 80 cents (USD) for the french roast and 90 cents for the espresso, and at 11.5 fluid ounces each. This was far cheaper than anything Starbucks has to offer in the store and more liquid to add insult to injury. Do the Starbucks "frappuccino" flavors taste the same, worse or better? In my opinion, the Café Time Coffee tastes almost the same.

More Taste Testing

Next month, I plan to buy a couple of other brands of canned coffee. At this time, I have no idea which brands I'll select but I'll be steering clear of the brands I've already mentioned.

There are some really nasty-tasting coffee brands on the shelves at the Royal Subic and I hope I don't accidentally buy one or more of them since I can't remember which ones are which.

I guess I'll have to consider the luck of the draw when the time comes.

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Although a lot of Filipinos seem to like the San Mig 3-in-1 coffee products, I don't. Of course, I'm not Filipino either.

In an attempt to be a bit adventurous with my coffee-drinking routine, I tried two different varieties of the San Mig 3-in-1 coffee, the original and mild flavors.

Ingredients of San Mig 3-in-1 Coffee

There are more varieties of the coffee than I can think of right now, but they also include the sugar-free versions. There's even a 2-in-1 version that leaves something out and I think it's the coffee creamer.

The regular 3-in-1 flavors include coffee, non-dairy creamer and sugar. I didn't keep the packages long enough to check the proportions, but maybe I should have.

The Taste Test

I don't know what it was that I didn't like about the coffee, but it wasn't the fact that it was instant coffee. I drink instant coffee at home and brewed coffee when I'm at a restaurant and I don't see a difference in taste in that regard.

My first thought was that it would taste better without the non-dairy creamer since I drink my coffee without any creamer normally. It could have been that there wasn't enough coffee in proportion to the other ingredients, but I wasn't willing to add more coffee to see if that was the case. It definitely wasn't the sugar because I don't make my own coffee very sweet.

Regardless, I couldn't drink either of the varieties I taste-tested.

My Relatives Love It

Minus one packet in each box (and each box was less than a single US dollar), I gave them to my in-laws. Within two days, both boxes of the San Mig 3-in-1 boxes were used and discarded. It was almost like they were starving for coffee.

I have a more discriminating taste than my relatives, obviously. I'll tell you one thing for sure: I would rather give up coffee than drink this stuff if I had no other choices. Call me fickle.

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The store where I usually get the Kopiko coffee candy recently ran out of the bags in the size that I normally buy. They have a huge bag available for 300 pesos, but I don't want big bags. When my nieces and nephews see a large bag of candy, they won't stop hounding me until it's gone. Their teeth are bad enough as it is and they don't need MORE candy to make them worse (they already eat candy every single day).

The store is on Magsaysay Drive, near the Olongapo City Mall, and the sign says "Circle J" outside (very similar the Circle K stores in the US). Some of the labels and racks inside the store say "J-Mart", so I can only assume they decided to change their name at some point and didn't change all the references. Anyway, since I wanted coffee candy, I decided to buy another brand.

X.O. Coffee Candy

The X.O. Coffee Candy comes under the brand name of "Jack 'n Jill" for the candy division of the Universal Robina Corporation (URC). URC is one of the largest brand food product companies in the Philippines and they have a ton of candies under the "Jack 'n Jill" brand, including candies that resemble cough drops.

I don't know how much a bag of X.O. Coffee Candy costs. I wasn't paying attention, but it's near to the same price as Kopiko. Kopiko is made in Indonesia whereas the X.O. products are all made in the Philippines.

Ingredients

Like Kopiko, X.O. Coffee Candy isn't the healthiest candy to have around. I'll live with the consequences. The ingredients are sugar, glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable fat, skimmed milk powder, coffee powder, soya lecithin and iodized salt.

When I see "hydrogenated" on anything, I tend not to buy it or consume it. I've seen and eaten worse and I want my coffee candy, so I'll live with it.

The Taste Test

While a piece of Kopiko coffee candy is a little dark brown square, a piece of X.O. Coffee Candy is oval-shaped and a little thicker. Kopiko comes in bags of 150 grams (the regular size anyway) and X.O. Coffee Candy comes in bags of 175 grams, which means X.O. provides 25 grams more for about the same price.

To be honest, I can't tell the difference in taste. Kopiko is a little stronger in flavor and that's about it. I think I'll be sticking to X.O. Coffee Candy from now on, unless they run out of it as well. In that case, Kopiko is the backup treat.

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I don't hide the fact that Nescafé Classic is my favorite instant coffee product. I buy two or three jars of it every month (except this month because it was out of stock). A couple of months ago, I noticed an advertisement on one of the jars I'd purchased. It didn't say a whole lot — the new product mentioned wasn't on the shelves yet.

Nescafé Protect

The new product is called "Nescafé Protect". I must not have paid attention to the label I looked at, at the time, because I only remember the "body partner" phrase. Since the store (Royal Subic) was out of Nescafé Classic, I ended up getting two jars of Nescafé Gold and one jar of Nescafé Protect. The jar of Nescafé Protect was half the size of the Nescafé Gold (in milliliters). I bought it simply to give it my exclusive (ha!) taste test, being the coffee fanatic that I am.

Nescafé Protect combines green coffee beans with regular coffee beans and is purported to have three times the amount of antioxidants as green tea. I don't really like green tea (I prefer black), so I can't say anything about that. According to their promotional material, regular coffee has twice the amount of antioxidants as green tea while Nescafé Protect has three times the amount. Would I be any healthier by switching to Nescafé Protect as my regular coffee choice? I don't know and I don't care.

The Nescafé Protect Taste Test

According to the promotional information, Nescafé Protect tastes like high quality regular coffee, making a smooth, mild and balanced cup with a fruity note. I didn't detect the fruity note, thankfully, because I don't like the flavor of fruit with either my coffee or my tea. On a side note, I always buy unsweetened Nestea (not the decaffeinated evil twin) as my instant tea product. I couldn't even find tea bags in the store this time (out of stock as well).

Does the taste warrant a switch? No. In fact, I like the taste of Nescafé Classic better. I have yet to taste the Nescafé Gold that I bought, but I suspect it will taste almost exactly like Nescafé Classic.

All Things Nestlé

I may sound like the poster child for the Nestlé Corporation based in the US, but I'm really not. It's just that Nestlé makes so many products used by consumers around the world. The Nestlé Corporation has subsidiaries in several countries, including the Philippines and Switzerland. The Nescafé coffees that I buy are manufactured by Nestlé Philippines while the Nestea jars that I buy say Nestlé Switzerland.

Nestlé makes other products you may be familiar with, but may not readily associate with them. In fact the old "Qwik" was change to "Nesquik" in order to emphasize the Nestlé brand. Heck, even the rabbit got a makeover.

Chances are, if you do the grocery shopping on a regular basis, you'll spot Nestlé products all over the place. I'm not even talking about the coffee and tea products. You can see breakfast cereals, dairy products, ice cream and a whole lot more.

It's no wonder I have a bunch of Nestlé products in my house. The products are everywhere.

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