I’ve recently been doing some instant coffee with milk and it is really fucking good. Around February I wanted a bit of a classic snack the way my grandparents would, some sweet bread with instant coffee. So I got myself some. I had forgotten the powdered creamer, so I used milk. I was pleasantly surprised.
It’s definitely more of a thing now. I think Swift Coffee were the ones that I first started seeing everywhere. They produce their own instant coffee as well as partnering with a lot of roasters. The main difference is that they went for the “quality first” as opposed to nestle, et al, who do super high temperature and pressure extractions followed by spray drying for the cheapest end product.
The downside is that it’s really energy intensive, so it costs like 10x the price. I wouldnt drink it as my daily coffee just because of the price, but it definitely does the trick when I’m traveling to a coffee desert or in the woods.