The Three Things That Matter, When Buying Coffee

Most home coffee isn't bad because of you. It's bad because of three things you've never been told to check. The bean. The origin. The freshness.
Get all three wrong and you're drinking brown water with caffeine in it.

1. The Bean

A real coffee bean has oils, sugars, and aromatic compounds.
That's where flavour comes from.
Instant coffee is spray-dried at extreme heat until it's powder. That process kills the flavour. What you're left with smells vaguely like coffee and tastes like a memory of it.
If the bean isn't intact, nothing else matters.

2. The origin

Where coffee is grown decides how it tastes. Same as wine.
Most instant uses cheap Robusta from wherever's cheapest that month. Dosed uses beans from Papua New Guinea — high altitude, volcanic soil, naturally sweet, low bitterness. That's the bean in your bottle.

3. The freshness