The Coolest Pieces of Gear We Tested This Week

For decades, instant coffee has been the kind of thing you find only at your grandparents’ house. Or sometimes discovered, dusty and forgotten, in the back of a cupboard at a rental cabin (c’mon, you know you tried it). 

There’s a reason instant coffee was forgotten, or just left behind: The stuff was awful. Using cheap Robusta beans, spray-dried in massive batches to save time and money, it was effectively mass-produced brown swill. Blecch.

Waka Coffee is out to “bring instant back.” Sourcing high-quality, single-origin Arabica beans, Waka freeze-dries them in small batches to preserve its aroma and flavor, then grinds and packages it in convenient single-serve sleeves. The result? A darned tasty cup of medium-roast coffee: well balanced, smooth-bodied, with faint notes of citrus. It’s as close to fresh brewed as instant coffee is ever likely to get. And it’s ready in a minute or two. Great taste, no waste, and no mess to clean up.

The single-serve packaging is ideal for travel, perfect for camping, and it’s great to stash in the cupboard in case of emergency. Don’t worry—it’s too delicious be forgotten. 

Waka uses recyclable packaging and donates 4 percent of profits to sponsor clean water projects around the globe. —Jon Langston, Commerce Editor

[$12 for eight 0.1 oz. sleeves; amazon.com]

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