A review of 13 major American coffee brands in Shanghai, where does Starbucks rank?

Text/Weishanghai

What are you doing on the first day of 2017?

Should I sleep in and refill my empty tank? Should I meet up with friends, eat, sing, and gossip to deepen my relationship? Or should I stay at home with my parents and chat about family matters? Or maybe…

On the first day of 2017, the Chestnut Food and Drink Guide is now available!

Here, you will see interesting reviews; here, you will follow the editor's footsteps to visit trendy stores; here, you will not only eat with us, but also become more "good at eating"!

Then follow me today and drink 13 cups of famous American coffee to wake up the brand new 2017! (I won’t tell you, we couldn’t sleep for 3 consecutive nights after drinking it! Tsundere face)

American coffee originally referred to light coffee made mainly with an American drip pot, but most of the American coffee we drink on the market today is made by adding a large amount of water to Italian espresso .

For this evaluation, we chose 13 popular brands of American coffee on the market, including the well-known Starbucks, Costa, Pacific Coffee, and Café d'Azur, as well as coffee drinks from fast food restaurants McDonald's, KFC, and Burger King, and even American coffee sold in convenience stores such as FamilyMart and 7-Eleven.

We invited three reviewers for this evaluation:

Coffee taster Mr. G , coffee lover Yuanyuan , passerby Xiaoming

A few hours later…

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Mr. G’s assessment was very detailed and he was indeed professional!

Coffee lover Yuanyuan selected her three favorite cups of American coffee~

Passerby Xiao Ming said that he began to doubt his life and his mind was blank X﹏X

A good cup of American coffee should taste mellow, clean and refreshing, slightly sour at the beginning, and sweet and long aftertaste. Coffee will change with different temperatures. Therefore, we evaluate it based on mellowness, cleanliness, acidity, sweetness, balance and aftertaste .

Then what's next?

Let’s take a look at the evaluation results with the editor!

Chain coffee/beverage shops

Starbucks

When talking about chain coffee brands, we have to mention the well-known Starbucks. Every once in a while, there will be a hot article about Starbucks appearing in our field of vision. As the world's number one coffee chain brand, how can it not be included in the American coffee review?

Starbucks coffee beans are all dark roasted. Compared with medium and light roasted beans, dark roasted beans are more fragrant and of course more bitter. The clean Starbucks Americano has a mellow taste. And because the coffee beans are dark roasted, the taste of Starbucks hot Americano does not change significantly after the temperature drops. It is still relatively bitter and has a relatively uniform consistency.

Costa Coffee

Costa is a well-known British coffee chain brand and is also widely known. In London in 1971, the Costa brothers Bruno and Sergio perfectly blended Arabica and Robusta coffee beans and slowly roasted them to preserve their charming aroma and oil, thus promoting the Costa brand.

Compared with Starbucks, Costa's hot American coffee tastes cleaner and a little sweeter. And because Costa's beans are a 6:1 blend of Arabica and Robusta, it tastes a little sweeter than Starbucks. The coffee beans roasted at low temperature have a mellow taste, and there is no obvious change in taste after the temperature is lowered, and the consistency is relatively high.

Pacific Coffee

Pacific Coffee was founded in Hong Kong in 1992 and officially entered the mainland China market in 2011. Unlike other coffee shops, Pacific Coffee has two types of beans: regular beans and kamasutra beans (coffee drinks can be replaced with kamasutra beans for an additional 3 yuan).

We bought hot American coffee made from Kamasuna beans for this review. Kamasuna beans are relatively softer than ordinary beans, and the sourness is not that high. In general, the taste of Kamasuna beans is slightly better than ordinary beans, and the difference in taste when drinking American coffee is more obvious. It tastes slightly bitter and sweet.

Essence Café

Zhiguan Coffee is a top coffee brand in Taiwan. It was founded by Taiwanese advertiser Zheng Songmao and provides customers with high-quality boutique coffee. Due to its amazing coffee taste, it has been sought after by everyone recently. And it currently has 8 stores in Shanghai, so it is also included in the category of chain coffee.

Undoubtedly, the hot American coffee of Zhiguan Coffee, a specialty coffee brand, tastes the best among all brands. It is clean and refreshing with a sweet and sour taste at the first sip, and the aftertaste is the longest among all coffees. The slightly sweet taste lingers in the mouth for a long time, and the mellow taste is unforgettable. Even a passerby like Xiao Ming can clearly distinguish the different taste of Zhiguan Coffee from all other coffees.

Caffebene

Caffebene is a very influential coffee chain in South Korea, and it became popular in China because of the Korean drama "Secret Garden" starring Ha Ji-won and Hyun Bin. And because its endorsement stars are Korean first-line stars Jang Keun Suk and Song Seung-heon, it is very popular among girls.

Coffee with You uses Arabica coffee beans. After deep roasting, the coffee beans have a mellow taste and a slightly sweet aftertaste. However, compared with Costa and Pacific coffee, the taste may not be as refreshing when you drink it, but it is still at a medium level among all coffees, and it is good overall.

Kafelaku Coffee

We accidentally discovered that there are two chain brands of cat poop coffee, one is called meo's coffee, and the other is the Kafelaku Coffee we bought for review. The logos and cups of the two are different. If any friends know the relationship between the two, please leave a message to tell us~

Kopi luwak is the excrement of coffee beans fermented in the civet cat's body. It is a national treasure of Indonesia, and costs 268 yuan per cup. However, the coffee we chose this time is the hot American coffee, which is about the same price as Starbucks. It uses a blend of Arabica and Robusta coffee beans. It tastes mellow and bitter, and should be the most bitter of all coffees.

Maancat Coffee

Manmao Coffee and Coffee With You are both Korean coffee shops. Although they are chain coffee shops, their decoration is relatively sophisticated and romantic, with a strong Korean style. The recently released Christmas cup sleeves are also very good, with colorful elks full of Christmas atmosphere.

As for the taste of Manmao Coffee Americano, it tastes similar to cat shit, and the scores of various indicators are almost the same. The bitterness can be felt immediately after taking a sip, and the sourness and sweetness are relatively unnoticeable. Perhaps because it is relatively strong, the taste is relatively not so refreshing, and the bitterness of the mellow coffee does not change significantly with the change of temperature.

Coco

Coco has been selling freshly ground coffee in many stores since 2014. The price of a cup of hot American coffee at 8 yuan is very high.

Coco's hot American coffee uses Robusta coffee beans, which are very clean and refreshing when you drink it. The cleanliness of the coffee is relatively high among all coffees. However, the mellowness of the coffee is the lowest among all coffees, which means that the taste is relatively light. Friends who cannot tolerate the strong taste of coffee can try it.

Fast food chain

McCafé

McDonald's is one of the earliest fast food chains to have its own coffee brand. Its brand philosophy is to integrate quality coffee culture into daily life and to impress the most discerning taste buds with coffee creations that combine quality and beauty.

I saw a post on Zhihu asking "Is McCafé really worse than Starbucks?", and one netizen replied that McCafé actually uses better beans than Starbucks, but the product may not be as stable as Starbucks. From the coffee I bought in this review, the taste is not much different from Starbucks, but the price is 1/3 lower than Starbucks.

KFC

KFC's hot American coffee uses Arabica coffee beans, and the coffee machine is a Wangli thermoplan fully automatic coffee machine worth about 100,000 yuan. And the price of 14 yuan per cup is the most cost-effective among all coffees.

KFC's hot American coffee has a cleaner taste than all other coffees, and the aroma is quite attractive when you drink it, and the aftertaste is longer than that of McDonald's and Burger King. The sweetness and sourness is slightly weaker than that of Burger King, but it is slightly sweeter than McDonald's, and the overall taste is still very good.

Burger King

Burger King also joined the ranks of coffee sellers in December this year. Burger King, which claims to use high-quality alpine beans, did not disappoint us. The overall taste score of its hot American coffee is still very good!

The slogan of Burger King's new product is "Freshly ground high mountain coffee beans, with the floral and fruity aroma of Yirgacheffe". It has been proven that it is indeed better than some coffees on the market. It is also very clean and refreshing. The sourness and sweetness of the beans are more obvious than those of McDonald's and KFC, but the aftertaste is slightly weaker than that of KFC. Friends who love coffee can give it a try.

Convenience store chains

ParCafé

Paike Coffee is a coffee drink provided by the well-known convenience store FamilyMart. FamilyMart can be found everywhere and can be a first aid for office workers to relieve fatigue. According to the official introduction, it uses coffee beans produced in Guatemala, which is mellow and rich.

The family also uses a fully automatic coffee machine. The first sip feels hot, super hot! When the Americano reaches a suitable temperature, the taste of the Americano is quite good, mellow and refreshing. I personally think that the iced Americano of the family is better than the hot Americano. When the weather gets hot, I recommend you to try the iced Americano of the family.

7-Store C-Store

The coffee used by 7-Eleven is the famous Italian brand illy, which uses fully automatic coffee machines. The quality of its products is stable, and at 8 yuan per cup, the price-performance ratio is quite high.

The American coffee at 7-Eleven tastes neutrally sour, with a slightly sweet aftertaste, but the bitterness is a bit obvious when hot, and the overall cleanliness is still relatively high. As for American coffee at convenience stores, 7-Eleven is highly recommended. It is worth mentioning that the heat preservation performance of the cup is very good!

Finally, based on the opinions of our friends, we selected the " Most Popular Coffee " and " Most Cost-effective Coffee ". If you like them, you can try them~

In terms of the taste of hot American coffee, everyone’s favorite coffees are: Zhiguan Coffee, Costa Coffee and Pacific Coffee!

In terms of cost-effectiveness, KFC coffee, which costs only 14 yuan per cup, tops the list, followed by 7-Eleven where you can drink illy coffee at 8 yuan per cup. Although Zhiguan Coffee costs 35 yuan per cup, its ingredients and production process are the best compared to other coffee shops of the same price, so it ranks third.