Monday, March 03, 2008

Ipoh White Coffee of Malaysia

When you say black coffee it means coffee without milk or creamer. So it is only natural to deduce that white coffee is coffee with milk or creamer. Its true in some parts of the world but not in Ipoh.

Ipoh is a town in Malaysia that is the birthplace of Ipoh White Coffee . It is made from Robusta coffee variety but the beans undergo a different roasting process from the traditional Malaysian black coffee where the beans are roasted with sugar and margarine until it is very dark.

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Ipoh White Coffee is produced by roasting the beans in margarine without sugar and roasted to a lighter degree resulting to roast that is lighter in color.

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My wife bought a few bags of instant white coffee for us to try at home. Each sachet contains 40 grams of 3-in-1 white coffee mix that you dissolve in 180 ml to 200 ml of hot water - just enough for one small, regular cup of coffee.

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40 grams is a lot for a small cup of coffee considering that a regular Nescafe instant coffee mix contains only 14 grams. The 40-gram mix contains Ipoh white coffee, non-dairy creamer and cane sugar.

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A light froth forms as soon as you mix in the hot water then the aroma of the roasted beans gets hold of you. A hot sip gets you acquainted with the rich and creamy coffee that has a slightly bitter taste and a subtle but familiar sweet taste and aroma of sugarcane that I used to eat raw in my childhood days while I walk home from school beside a sugarcane plantation.

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Decades have passed since I've eaten a tubo (sugarcane). Nakaka-miss.