Two brands of coffee I would never recommend are SATI MOCCA (red packet) and INTENSO (brown packet). Sati black was sold at Blikle's years ago and was quite nice, so the Sati brand attracted my attetnion. It has a weird taste of some nondescript aroma. Even when mixed with other coffees like Tchibo to drown out the off-taste, it spoils the taste of the good coffee.
Intenso is even worst. I once bought 1/2 kg of whole beans and combined them with Tchibo beans, That was a mistake. I had to manually pick out and discard the small, shiny balck Intenso beans,which took hours, and even then the Tchibo took on their peculiar off-flavour.
Agreed. Biedronka do very good coffee beans - the quality is excellent for the price, however at the moment I'm regretting buying one of those kilo bags from Lidl. Extremely bitter with an unpleasant aftertaste.
They're sold at Carrefour. I presume the Intenso (and it was intensely nasty) was an inferior variety of Asian robusta. All coffee is divided into arabica (rich, smooth, aromatic) and robusta (robust as the name suggests). Great coffee blends are created with just the right proportion of arabica and some robusta for added body and kick. There are passable all-robusta brands such as Prima and Maxwell House -- nothing to write home about but passable. Anyway I'll think twice before an extremly attractive price catches we off guard again. One all-robusta variety I'll never try again is Gala. I got it in the States one time and it too was quite nasty.
Another bad one (I think I've tried them all) was Woseba Mocca Gold. It was 'lokowane' on Ojciec Mateusz and quite cheap. I tried it once. Now they seem to have changed their marketing strategy and raised their price from about 6 zł per 250g to around 9zł . Dunno if the coffee has improved. Astra 'nisko drażniąca' (stomach friendly) is OK as a mix. I never use any one coffee just as it comes but make up my own blends. For instance MK Premium (red packet) or Tchibo Exquisite, MK Sahara and maybe Astra mild or even Mildano (decaf) for a later-evening coffee. But I'm not into pricey gourmet coffee or anything else and tend to have modest tastes bordering on the spartan. (You know the one-half of mankind going to sleep hungry kind of thing!). It's no wonder then that my guru has been the (late) American cuilinary expert James Beard who once anti-snobbishly advised: Always buy the cheaprest wine you find acceptable. Of course, to find out you have to experiment and occasionally end up wtih unpalatable crap like Intenso coffee. (Avoid it like the plague!)
