The ultimate servo coffee taste test

On a holiday road trip you can’t be too fussy with your coffee — or can you? Two baristas and a coffee lover put service station brews to the ultimate taste test.

Coffee experts Alex Borg, Danilo De Andrade and Danielle Reckless taste-test a selection of service station coffees. Picture: Peter Wallis

IT’S summer road trip season which means stopping for servo coffee.

And with the big players duking it out in the price wars, delivering a caffeine hit for less than $1, we put the cheap service station brews to the ultimate taste test.

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Making up our judging panel was champion barista from Brisbane’s Veneziano Coffee Alex Borg, Di Bella Coffee barista Danilo De Andrade and caffeine addict Danielle Reckless.

The three blind-tasted long black and flat white options from Coles Express, 7 Eleven, Star Mart and Puma, judging them on taste, texture, aroma and overall drinkability.

1. COLES EXPRESS LONG BLACK, 80c

Danielle: It’s surprisingly better than I thought it would be. It’s pretty smooth. I would drink a cup of that. It didn’t have a terrible aftertaste.

4/10

Danilo: It’s a bit dull, (there’s) low acidity. I can tell the true flavour of the coffee was burnt out, there’s a lot of water there, so it’s a bit watery. I don’t see a lot of character there. There’s no sweetness.

3.5/10

Alex: It just tastes like it’s been cooked too much. There’s not much sweetness. It tastes more like a filter-based coffee than an espresso coffee because it’s super diluted.

3/10

Coles Express flat white

2. COLES EXPRESS FLAT WHITE, 80c

Danielle: I think it’s super weak. I can’t taste much coffee in it. It kind of tastes like old coffee that got left out. It doesn’t have any acidity to it. It’s really flat.

1/10

Danilo: I think the big issue is it’s very diluted so I cannot really taste coffee. It’s just like dirty milk.

1/10

Alex: Visually it looks quite dull. The aroma is a bit like sour milk. The flavour is very weak. It tastes like a dark roasted coffee. All the sweetness is coming from the milk. It’s very milky. It has quite a bitter finish to it. To me it just tastes like some really dull, gross milk. Strength wise it’s so diluted that most of the flavour is coming from the milk rather than the coffee.

2/10

3. 7-ELEVEN LONG BLACK, $1

Danielle: It tastes like a stronger long black than the first one, but it tastes quite burnt to me. It tastes like the coffee isn’t necessarily fresh. It has a strong after taste. It kind of tastes like cigarettes.

3/10

Danilo: It’s quite burnt. I taste a lot of tobacco. It’s kind of grainy, powdery on my palate. It’s stronger in strength but not in flavour. The flavour is nothing special. It’s not very good. The body of this coffee is just weird.

1/10

Alex: It has smoke, ash and leathery kind of notes. It’s cooked to the point where you’re getting really acrid flavours coming out of the coffee. I like how much stronger it is than the first one but it’s not pleasant. The finish is the worst thing. You’re left with a bitterness.

1/10

7-Eleven flat white

4. 7-ELEVEN FLAT WHITE, $1

Danielle: It’s very weak. All I taste is milk. It tastes a bit sweeter than the first flat white. Maybe if they put in another two, three or four shots of coffee I might like it.

2/10

Danilo: I taste more milk but I think maybe the milk is better in this one. It tastes like a fresher milk in this one. It’s still very, very weak - not much coffee flavour. It’s very dull.

2/10

Alex: I think it tastes creamier. It has a richer flavoured milk, but the coffee tastes very weak. The flavour of the coffee while it’s very dull and you don’t get much acid, it leaves quite a bitter finish.

1/10

5. STAR MART LONG BLACK, $1

Danielle: There’s something about this one, it’s almost nutty but not in a good way. I feel like someone would have to pay me a dollar to drink that. The others tasted weak but still like coffee, but that has a weird flavour to it.

1/10

Danilo: Is this coffee? It tastes very woody, very dry, really flat, really dull. It has an unpleasant aftertaste, it’s still bitter. It’s weird. It doesn’t taste like coffee. It tastes like roasted sweet potato.

0/10

Alex: It’s worse than instant coffee. It tastes like really, really over extracted coffee. It’s super woody. It tastes really dark. I think it’s really carbon-y. It tastes like burnt wood.

0/10

Star Mart flat white

6. STAR MART FLAT WHITE, $1

Danielle: It tastes like it had sweetness added to it or it’s made off powdered milk. It tastes almost like a caramel milkshake, like it should be cold on ice. It wouldn’t be a coffee I would drink.

3/10

Danilo: It didn’t have a proper extraction. You know when you do a caramel milkshake and after one month when you come back from holidays and you forgot it in your sink (that’s what it tastes like). I taste milk and syrup and bad milk.

0/10

Alex: It tastes like artificial sweetener, like caramel syrup has been added to it. You can’t taste coffee in it, it just tastes like caramel and bad milk. It has this really dark, dirt flavour underneath the caramel. It’s not good. Can we go minus 10?

0/10

A Puma service station

7. PUMA LONG BLACK, $3.60

Danielle: It’s got some flavour - it’s not as boring as the others. But it still tastes a little burnt. The aftertaste isn’t great. It’s the best of the bunch. On a road trip I’d drink that.

5/10

Danilo: That coffee is a bit overwhelming for me in flavour. It’s really smoky, it’s not enjoyable the aftertaste. There’s more strength than the first one, but the first one is a bit more gentle to drink.

3/10

Alex: It’s really dense which would probably be good if it tasted good, but because it tastes bad, it’s not good. It’s really viscous. It’s painful to swallow. It’s very, very dark. There’s tobacco and smoke and it leaves this coating on your tongue that’s really bitter. It’s super overextracted. I’m not a fan.

1/10

8. PUMA FLAT WHITE, $3.60

Danielle: It’s not as unpleasant as the other flat whites, but still quite weak. It’s still very milky. If I was going to choose out of all the flat whites that would be the best.

4/10

Danilo: That has more of a balance between milk and coffee. I can taste the milk, I can taste the coffee. There are some flavours there like brown sugar, maybe chocolate tones.

4.5/10

Alex: It’s definitely the nicest. It has the nicest mouth feel, the most sweetness and there are some flavours there like caramels, but it still has that bitter sweetness to it like bittersweet chocolate. It’s got a much better balance of coffee and milk.

3/10