1) An industrial food having "speed of preparation and long shelf life" but few other redeeming qualities.
2) Dehydrated coffee that can be brewed simply by adding hot water.
3) The beverage variant of freeze-dried food, but not made from pet droppings. Made instead from the dried body fluids of ticks and fleas removed from pets that have been misbehaving.
The bugs are first separated from the target animals and squashed.
After that, the solid parts (feelers, eye stalks, scratchy little feet, shells, and abdominal plates) are removed, and the resulting fluids are dried.
No matter how bad it tastes, it's still high in caffeine, and that's the point. Since this product contains no water whatsoever, it is a useful backpacking food, or a food-like substance, or a drug, or whatever it is.*
The best way of consuming instant coffee is to take a deep breath, put a tablespoonful of the powder on your tongue, and then wash it down with warm water before you resume breathing, or before you start retching, whichever comes first.
If done properly, you won't have to taste a thing but will still get a nice buzz. Which may, of course, turn out to be incipient esophageal Lyme disease.
* Word on the street is that caffeine was developed by plants as an insecticide, so if you're drinking this stuff, it came from bugs that were, however briefly, insecticide addicts.
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Me? Not instantly tasty either.