Instant coffee · 3 min readPercol Smooth Colombian review
Freeze-dried single-origin Colombian arabica, and the most expensive instant coffee per serving we track. The origin is real; the bulk pack is not the saving it looks like.
Nine pence a cup, for a jar of single-origin Colombian arabica. Instant coffee almost never tells you where it came from, so a stated origin and a stated process is genuinely more than the mainstream shelf offers between them. It is also half again as expensive per serving as Kenco Rich or Nescafé Gold Blend. Buy it for the Colombian arabica and the certification, and go in knowing that the 600g figure is six 100g jars rather than a catering tin, so it is a multipack rather than a bulk discount.
Freeze-dried single-origin Colombian arabica, Rainforest Alliance certified, and at 9p a cup the dearest instant per serving in our catalogue.
- Tastes
- Smooth, light-bodied, toffee and citrus
- Strength
- Mild
- Best for
- Mild black coffee
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 2/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 4/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 3/5
Buy it ifYou want a single-origin instant, which the format very rarely offers.
Skip it ifYou are buying on price. At 9p a cup this is the dearest instant we track.
Live prices, sizes and retailers for this coffee sit on its product page. This review is the analysis alongside it. See prices →
The single origin is the reason to look
Almost all instant coffee is blended, and almost none of it tells you where the coffee came from. Percol Smooth Colombian is 100% Colombian arabica, freeze-dried, and that combination of a stated origin, a stated species and a stated process is more information than the entire mainstream shelf offers between them. If traceability is what you want from a jar, the field of candidates is short and this is on it.
Percol describe it as deliciously smooth and well balanced, with hints of toffee and citrus, and rate it a 3 on their own strength scale, which runs to 6 for their dark robusta blends. So this is deliberately the light, easy end of their range rather than a bold cup, and buyers who arrive wanting intensity are the ones who come away disappointed.
| Process | Freeze-dried |
|---|---|
| Beans | 100% Colombian arabica |
| Certification | Rainforest Alliance |
| Strength | 3 on Percol's own 6-point scale |
| Pack | 600g, sold as six 100g jars |
| Cost | £0.09 per 2g serving |
Percol have a long association with ethical certification and older listings still carry a Fairtrade mark. The certification we can confirm on the current jar is Rainforest Alliance, so that is the one stated here. If Fairtrade specifically matters to you, check the label rather than the listing.
Why the big number is not a bulk discount
The 600g here is a case of six 100g jars rather than one large pack, which matters because bulk usually lowers the unit price and this does not. At 9p a serving it is the most expensive instant coffee in our catalogue, against a format median of about 7p a cup and against 6p for the cheapest freeze-dried jars on this page. Buying six at once saves you shopping trips. It does not buy you a discount per cup.
| Percol Smooth Colombian | Kenco Rich | |
|---|---|---|
| Pack | 6 × 100g | 200g jar |
| Servings | About 300 | About 100 |
| Cost per serving | £0.09 | £0.06 |
| Cost per 100 cups | £9.00 | £6.00 |
At two cups a day that difference is roughly £22 a year. Whether a single origin and a certification are worth £22 is a real question with no single right answer, but it should be asked deliberately rather than assumed away because the pack looks big.
What buyers consistently report
The positive consensus is consistent and specific: smooth, not bitter, with a strong coffee-shop aroma when the jar is opened, and enough flavour that people report using less of it than they expect to. For a light-roast instant, not needing to over-dose the spoon is a meaningful compliment.
It also has the weakest ratings of anything on this page, and the recurring complaint is a familiar one: long-standing buyers saying the taste changed after a packaging redesign. The brand did change hands in recent years, which makes the complaint plausible, but nobody has confirmed a reformulation and the review base is small enough that a handful of unhappy buyers moves the average. Treat it as a flag rather than a finding.
Who it actually suits
- Drinkers who want a named origin from a format that usually hides it.
- People who find dark roast instant harsh and want something lighter and cleaner.
- Offices and large households buying several jars at once, where the multipack is convenient.
Who should skip it
Anyone buying instant because it is the cheap format. That is most people, reasonably, and for them the answer is one of the 6p jars: instant is the lowest-cost way to make coffee at home, and paying a 50% premium per cup inside the cheapest format is a strange place to spend money. Skip it too if you want a strong cup, because Percol have rated it mild themselves and they are right to.
As with everything here, judge it against other instant rather than against a brewed cup. On that basis it is a well-differentiated product with a price that has to be chosen on purpose.
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