We taste-tested servo coffees to find out what's best

Aussies love coffee. Mark Free, an owner of Melbourne’s excellent Everyday Coffee, sure does. “I love coffee. It’s a delicious drink,” he says as he shuffles in his chair while preparing to taste our selection of servo coffees. Why are we testing servo coffees? Because we all deserve a good cup while we’re on the road, whether we’re commuting to work or travelling along Australia’s highways.

Twenty years ago it was hot and frothy ‘cups of cino’, but today it’s all about filtered batch brews and turmeric lattes. Our tastes have changed. And our hopes for a good brew wherever we go are higher than ever – especially when we’re on a road trip. We asked Mark to sit down and taste four big coffees from the big four servos to find out who’s making a cup that does the trick when we’re despo.

Mark hates talking about ‘passion’ for coffee. He just likes it, and he has a simple guide: “What I’m looking for when I’m tasting coffee is a good balance of sweetness, a little bit of bitterness and acidity.” He knows what he’s talking about – he’s been in the coffee business for over 12 years.

“Bitterness is a vital part of a balanced coffee. Just like a dark chocolate, you want bitterness and sweetness to balance each other out. You can’t have just sweetness; it’s a lolly, not a coffee.”

“Acidity sits in the middle of the spectrum. It adds a little bit more excitement.”

“At Everyday, we don’t just make coffee – we sort our own beans and roast it all ourselves.” As well as knowing his stuff, Mark is the perfect person to test servo coffee because he doesn’t drink it, so he has no favourites: “When I’m on the road, I usually take my own coffee with me. I don’t mess around with service station coffee too much.”

We stuck exclusively to machine-made coffee. Why? Because it’s a like-for-like comparison and available in most servos. But before we kicked off the tasting, we asked Mark what he knew about the machine-coffee industry.

“I would say that they use a fairly low grade of coffee. They have, potentially, a lot of Robusta, which is a high-yield, lower-quality variety of coffee, and generally cheaper.

“The all-in-one service station machines are pretty good, I think; millions of dollars of research and development go into them. A lot more things can go wrong with humans than with machines.

“I’d sooner put my coffee life in the hands of a machine than a human.”

As he picks up a cup of Lavazza Blue from a local BP, his optimism is tempered: “I would hope that these coffees do the job of keeping me awake on the road. I don’t have much more expectation than that.”

“It smells pretty good, pretty smooth, bit of vanilla. Yeah, perfectly drinkable. I think it’s a little bit weaker than what I would like. Better than an aeroplane coffee.”

“I’d down that on the road.”

“Pretty smooth. Very mild. Not a lot going on. A little bit caramel/biscuit-y, but not very exciting at all. I wouldn’t say bland. I wouldn’t even say offensive. I would say unremarkable in every way.”

“It’s almost a bit more like a tea, I would say.”

“This one is your wake-up call, for sure. It’s definitely punching you in the face.”

“It’s a little bit bitter, but not offensively so. Still weak enough that the bitterness is not overpowering.”

“It’s a bit darker and a bit stronger. Still very drinkable – very mild. Closer to an aeroplane coffee than the BP was.”

“I’d happily drink this on the road. It gets the job done, for sure.”

“7-Eleven. One dollar a cup. Probably the harshest we’ve had so far. I’d probably want to put a little bit of milk and sugar in that one, for sure. But it does the job. It would definitely wake me up – and put hairs on my chest as well, probably.”

We surprised Mark with a long black from McCafé as an outlier – a test to see whether Australia’s most accessible barista-made coffee trumps the machine-made brews.

“Very hot, but it does come with a warning. Pretty balanced. Yeah, not too harsh. Not too weak.”

“Balanced. I think it’s my favourite.”

As expected, none of these coffees shocked Mark into disgust or sent him into caffeined rapture. If you like your coffee mellow and mild, go the Big Yum. If it’s an early start or a long drive and you need the takeaway equivalent of an ice bucket tipped on your head, grab a 7-Eleven or a Caffé Aurora from Caltex. And the McCafé is the answer if you’re aiming for balance (or you’re a bit of a snob).

“On the road, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” says Mark, but what would he do if he was travelling?

“I would either stock up on a big thermos of coffee from a place I know and trust, or make a big plunger at home and stock up with that. If you want to go hardcore, you can take an AeroPress and either get hot water from the service station or bring a thermos of hot water of your own, and brew as you go.”

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