Pictured above: Aik Cheong CoffeeTea 3 in 1 Mix
Having seen this 3-in-1 coffee/tea mix countless times on the shelves at Giant Supermarket, it was time I finally tried it.
I was introduced to Yuanyang only about a year ago. No surprises there, given that I used to be a tea lover who hated coffee in any form. My affair with coffee only began after a colleague started drinking hazelnut coffee daily, and I spent my mornings getting hooked to the aroma. Hazelnut coffee was the beginning, and I was soon consuming copious amounts of caffeine. Black coffee, latte, cappuccino – you name it. Yuanyang was an attempt to reduce my coffee intake.
Anyway, Aik Cheong CoffeeTea 3 in 1 Mix. I thought of Yuanyang when I saw it, but it might not be the same thing. According to Wikipedia, Yuanyang is a mixture of coffee and Hong Kong-style milk tea, in a 3:7 ratio. The proportions of coffee and tea is not specified on this packaging, and I’m also not sure if the tea used here counts as “Hong Kong-style milk tea”.
Upon opening the packaging, I realised I didn’t know if a sachet was for one mug or half a mug. My first attempt resulted in mug full of watered down CoffeeTea which tasted like sweetened, flavoured water. The second attempt was better. Half a mug of hot water with a sachet of CoffeeTea mix made a decent morning pick-me-up.
While drinkable, I did find the coffee to be more like an aftertaste than a component of the actual drink. I would have preferred a better balance between the coffee and tea, and a stronger drink overall. The sweetness of this drink was, as usual, an issue since I prefer my food to be less sweet.
It’s a pretty affordable drink, with each packet consisting of 25 sachets. A word of caution though – for the batch I bought, the sachets were not easy to open without scissors as the notches were cut too far to the end. But given the price, I can’t complain.
that.interval 