gemini://gemini.dimakrasner.com/coffee-alts.gmi

I asked for coffee replacements as a birthday gift, and this is exactly what my wife's aunt (an excellent naturopath and herbalist) gave me. She's a generous, knowledgeable and generally awesome person, and this is an amazing gift. She knows I'm in a low carb diet with early signs of fatty liver and cutting on sugar, so she gave me:

I really like the Inka drink. The only bad thing about it is price: it costs about 1.5 times more than the cheap instant coffee I usually go for, but every cup needs 2 teaspoons and not one, making it expensive. The non-organic variant is a little bit cheaper but the ingredients list is different, so I assume it also tastes differently. It tastes like very "weak" instant coffee, has some roasted aroma (which I like) and works well with soy milk. Sometimes it doesn't melt 100% even when water is boiling hot, but if I use boiling water and stir before I add the milk it's fine. I really enjoy this drink, especially in cold days.

I also like the chicory drink, although it takes some getting used to. It has a "complex" flavor, every sip is a bit different: it reminds me of the taste of raw kohlrabi but a bit nutty or roasted. I think it's a bit cheaper than the Inka drink, and I usually drink it in mornings. The strong flavor helps me wake up and start my day. I really like it too, but I can't say it's extremely close to coffee of any kind. Price is very similar to the Inka drink but maybe I can drop from 2 to 1.5 teaspoons per cup: I still haven't tried this, but I did try 1 and it wasn't good (very weak taste and felt like drinking water).

The date seed coffee is a disappointment. It takes time for the powder to sink to the bottom of the cup and I don't like the waiting. It tastes and smells almost exactly like the kind of coffee it's advertised as a replacement for: no hazelnuts flavor at all and the same pros/cons. The company that makes this particular product is primarily a coffee company that also happens to sell 3 date-based coffee replacements, and this can explain the disappointing list of ingredients: this drink contains coffee (but somehow with near zero caffeine) and caramel (but somehow with low carbs). They claim it's a super healthy drink full of minerals and good things, but then put caramel in it. Everything about this drink except the claimed amount of caffeine, is suspicious, and it's expensive: twice the price of the Inka drink, and I think it's about 2-3 times more than a 3 pack of cheap but OK-ish Turkish coffee.

I still don't know what I think about the mushroom powder: I had some refactoring-heavy days at work in the last two weeks and I feel like 1/4 or 1/2 teaspoon of this powder in my morning drink (usually chicory) made me feel sharp and energetic, but without the sudden drop of energy shortly after a cup of coffee. In other days I felt like the mushroom powder had no effect on me. And this powder is super expensive: about 5 times the price of the Inka drink for 100g.

I don't drink coffee with sugar (only organic, unsweetened soy milk) but I did try the steviol based powders in protein shakes. They melt easily, and two teaspoons definitely help mask the taste of pea protein. My wife and I also have a weekly or bi-weekly tradition of making challah on Fridays and bring to dinner with my wife's aunt and her family. Last week we used the steviol based powder instead of white sugar and nobody noticed any difference in taste or texture, although I see a huge difference in cost (many times more than sugar) and end result was a bit more dense than the average (but texture was OK and we're not super consistent anyway). We still haven't found a use for the coconut sugar because we don't eat or make deserts since January: my wife joined me in my low-carb diet.

Coffee Replacements