Bernard O'Shea tries a Dalgona coffee detox

A viral trend on TikTok is bringing instant coffee back into fashion and Bernard was almost instantly addicted

Bernard O'Shea. Photograph Moya Nolan

I’ve confessed to watching hours of people cutting into cakes and bars of soap on Instagram. What I possibly left out of my confession was my addiction to watching people make cloud bread, mozzarella donuts, and my current favourite culinary indulgence, Dalgona coffee.

If you're following food trends online, and especially those invading timelines on Instagram and TikTok, you will have almost definitely seen Dalgona Coffee. It went viral almost two years ago, when spotted by influencers in the U.S on a South Korean TV program.

It's essentially a frappe made by whisking instant coffee, sugar, and hot water together until it becomes a light frothy mixture. Then you add whatever milk you like to it leaving the final beverage looking and tasting similar to a sweet cappuccino or latte. The name Dalgona means honeycomb toffee in Korean.

Instant coffee in the last twenty years has been regulated primarily to train trolleys and damp office kitchens. The once all-too-common sight of those massive red-capped glass jars were, for the last two decades, only seen on cafe counters collecting tips. 

However, the instant coffee market, thanks to this simple frothy flair, has “surged 65% in March to $8.5 million from a year ago”, according to Bloomberg.

To make a Dalgona coffee is bulletproof - if you have the forearms of an industrial mixer, that is. The first time, it took me the entirety of a Schitt's Creek episode. I thought my arm was going to fall off. A quick Google search, and I found out most people use a small mixer. Eventually, my light brown frappe was ready.

Then my old familiar friend, Paddy McGuilty’s Goat, paid a visit. Looking at my brown gooey experiment I felt guilty for constantly giving out to the kids for messing in the kitchen. They love to mix water into their playdough, butter into water, even crayons into water. I’ve had near breakdowns trying to clean up Rice Krispies that have been forged onto the floor tiles with marker ink and orange juice.

Should I really be berating them, when I love nothing more than to waste time secretly trying to copy all those experimental food trends myself? Mostly with disastrous results and similar cleaning-up times? I’ve had two sleepless nights, trying to figure out why my cloud bread wouldn’t rise (that's another day's article). I’ll see your dried-in Rice Krispies, and raise you a homemade baking-soda bomb.

I don’t drink milk, so I just topped mine up with coffee. Sounds odd, I know, coffee being topped up with coffee. It was an insane, caffeine-infused hit. If you're a Quentin Tarantino fan, you will be familiar with the graphic scene in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta's character Vincent plunges a syringe full of adrenaline into Mia’s heart when it stops and she surges upright back into life. That's what it felt like.

Before long, I was having a Dalgona every day along with my 3 other cups of coffee. The kids loved watching me stir it, and were constantly amazed when the black liquid would turn into what my 5-year-old Tadhg called “melted yuck ice-cream”. We watched a YouTube video about how liquids form into solids, and I felt that I was somewhat having fun and educating them at the same time.

Bernard O'Shea tries the latest Tiktok coffee trend - dalgona coffee

And that was what this article was supposed to be about. How a viral food trend helped me overcome my annoyance with the kids making a mess. However, a few days later I noticed my heart skipping, and felt surges of anxiety pulsate through my body. Then I got twitchy, and had difficulty sleeping at night. However, it felt physical moreover than mental.

Then I remembered having similar sensations a few years ago while working 15 hour days and getting up at 5:30 every morning exhausted. (If you are observant, you might have noticed a paragraph back, “Before long I was having a Dalgona every day along with my 3 other cups of coffee”.) I was completely overdoing it with the caffeine.

I know friends and family that have given up their cup of Joe completely, and have told me that they feel so much better because of it. I myself have started drinking turmeric tea in the evenings and I’m partial to the odd herbal hot drink, but I love my coffee.

I tried cutting it out completely, and thought “sure, it's only coffee”. The first day I felt fine, but by the third day, and particularly that morning, I was close to tears. You know you have a coffee addiction when you're licking the icing off a Cafe Noir biscuit on the school run.

I tried supplementing my cold turkey with cups of tea but it didn’t work. Then I did a deal with the tiny undisciplined devil that lives in the box room of my brain. “I’ll have one cup a day” I promised him. He replied “Only the one, Bernard? Are you sure?”

I've just gone a week with only having one cup a day. I haven’t cheated by trying to put 6 espressos into one mug or lumping a Dalgona into an Americano. However, with the ease in restrictions, the temptation of cafes reopening could lure me back into caffeine oblivion.

Last week a good friend of mine who constantly berates me on my excessive caffeine consumption rang and said we should meet up for a walk. He told me, “there's a nice coffee truck nearby we can grab a cup” My reply? “Sure, but, I’m only having the one!” Now, where have I heard that one before?