Best Liquid Coffee Dispensers and Concentrate

Liquid coffee or liquid coffee concentrate is a type of coffee which is pre-brewed into a thick coffee concentrate to be dispensed later on. Douwe Egberts was one of the first pioneers of liquid coffee and they still today remain the dominant force when it comes to liquid coffee.

We feel liquid coffee and dispensers have a number of pros and cons and are a great fit in some instances and a bad fit in others. We give our two cents below:

Liquid Coffee Pros:

A big pro of a liquid system is its speed. Liquid dispensers are in fact synonymous with speed. A cup is typically dispensed in under 5 seconds making it the fastest coffee machine on earth. Dispensing a coffee is literally like opening a tap. For this reason, a common and well-suited environment for liquid coffee machines is in conference venues and large meeting environments. If you quite literally have a need for speed then liquid coffee could be the solution for you.

The other proof liquid is the price of the actual coffee dispensers. Some of the most popular liquid dispensers are the Douwe Egberts Cafitesse C50, Cafitesse C60, and C300 liquid coffee dispensers. These liquid coffee machine range in price from R10,000-R25,000 (prices sourced from DouweEgbertsLiquidCoffee.com and may vary depending on supplier). Most coffee companies rent out the dispensers and many rent them at no charge when you are spending a few thousand rands a month with them.

Liquid Coffee Cons:

Liquid coffee machines can be costly (not the machines itself but the actual coffee). Because there aren’t many competitors in the liquid coffee space, competitive prices are hard to come by.

Liquid Coffee Prices:

Most liquid coffee sachets are sized either in 1.2 liter sachets or 2-liter sachets. The ideal ratio of liquid coffee to water is 32:1 which is 32 parts water to 1 part liquid coffee concentrate according to DouweEgbertsLiquidCoffee.com.

Using the 32:1 ratio as above, one would get the following a number of cups out of a liquid coffee sachet:

1.2 liter liquid coffee sachet – will make 38.4 liters of coffee. Which, when using a 250 ml cup of coffee, will make a total of 154 cups of black coffee

2 liter liquid coffee sachet – will make 64 liters of coffee, which would equate to 256 cups of black coffee (assuming a 250 ml a cup of coffee)

Koffee- Express one of the leading online retailers, at the time of writing, list their 2-liter sachets at between R825 – R920 per 2 liter sachet which would equate to R3.22 -R3.59 per cup of 250 ml coffee, based on the above calculations. This makes liquid coffee considerably more expensive then the resulting cost per cup of most coffee bean and filter coffee brands out there (prices do vary depending on the supplier – DouweEgbertsOnline list their 2-liter decaff concentrate at $75 which equates to around R937).

Liquid Coffee Freshness And Storage:

Coffee beans, coffee capsules and filter coffee can all be stored in a relatively similar way. Within the packaging, all the above can be stored for around 2 years as long as they are not exposed to severe heat or moisture.

Liquid coffee is a totally different animal. Liquid coffee (not liquid milk) needs to be stored in a fridge once opened. This can be rather challenging to manage especially if you are going through large quantities of it and have limited fridge space.

Our Take On Liquid Coffee:

As a summary Liquid coffee is a good compact solution for use in conference venues and areas where there is a lot of volumes at one time.

We feel, however, in other environments like offices, restaurants and boardrooms, best liquid coffee in usa is often not your best and you can often do better for freshness, choice, and price with another coffee machine solution.