[creamyhorror]

UCC has had black unsweetened canned coffee for quite a while (UCC Black 無糖 sugarless).

Sugarless Japanese canned coffee tends to taste rough because it often includes some robusta beans, which are cheaper and more bitter-tasting. Which is why I prefer the less-sweet (微糖) variants, or with milk/creamer to balance the bitterness. The exceptions are the special cans advertising coffee from a specific country picked by some champion barista or other, which are better, but of course nowhere near as good as a freshly-brewed cup.

What's different about mass-produced coffee in Japan is that it leans heavily towards only mildly bitter coffee, not the hard bitter stuff you might get elsewhere. Convenience-store machine-brewed coffee is almost always pleasant and easy to drink unsweetened, which is not the case in many other countries. Heck, a few years ago the 7-11s here in Singapore brought in 7-11 Japan's coffee machines, but the beans they use here are far more bitter than the ones in Japan.

[closedl00p]

I agree about the rough taste in general. I've made it a habit to try as many different canned coffees as I can when visiting Japan (and every "black" coffee I saw), and looking back at my notes, I felt like "Premium BOSS Black" was quite good, and "UCC Black New Grounds Fruity Blend" and "UCC Black Wholly Brewed" were both decent, compared to most of the other black coffees.

[anotheruser13]

I used to buy liters of Drink It Black (unsweetened black coffee) or Tasty Club (sweetened black coffee) which I chugged on the 203 bus that I took to Japanese school. Good times!