Jim P.

Father, geek, serial hobbyist.

KWZ Smells Like Coffee is a medium brown ink that, true to its name, smells like coffee.

I have to be careful with scents so I got a sample to find out if I could tolerate it.

Surprisingly, the scent has been good and not harsh or harmful to me. I’ve seen lots of complaints about scented inks misbehaving in various ways, so I was happy to find out this one worked well. It’s also not too watery, and seems to have some nice shading and a tiny bit of sheen.

The scent does fade after a while, but I haven’t measured exactly how long. A swatch I made about two and a half months ago still has a slight scent. Swatches from a year and a half ago have no scent.

I liked it well enough that I bought a bottle!

Scans

The scans are a touch darker than it appears to the eye, but not much.

Scan of an ink swatch card made from Col-o-ring paper Scan of an ink swatch card made from Iroful paper Scan of an ink swatch card made from MD paper
Swatch Card Scans. Click to enlarge.

MD paper seems to hit a sweet spot of the best color for me. Col-o-ring is a bit too dark.

Photos

In the photos, you can see a bit of the sheen show through in the large swatch areas, though it does not show in the writing.

Photo of a col-o-ring swatch card. The ink on the card is a dark brown with some shading so some areas are a little lighter brown. On the right is a large ink blob that is lighter in the upper left and darker in the lower right. On the left is text reading "KWZ Smells Like Coffee" with an X and a curlicue underneath. Photo of an Iroful swatch card with a line drawing of a paint pallette. The ink on the card is a dark brown with lots of shading so several areas are a little lighter brown. On the left, inside the line drawing is a blob of ink with swirls and spots of darker ink. On the right is text reading "KWZ Smells Like Coffee" with an X and a curlicue underneath. Photo of an Iroful swatch card with a line drawing of a paint pallette taken from an angle. It is the same as before, but because of the angle some areas appear to have some reflective sheen to them.
Swatch Card Photos. Click to enlarge.

Microscope

In the microscope photos, Iroful looks the best as usual. Smooth edges on the lines, even saturation, less harsh transitions on the shading, and a bit warmer than the others.

Ink under Magnification. Click to enlarge.

Chromatography

Photo of a chromatography strip with ink. On the right is a faint line where it started which appears bluish. There are some blue areas as it expanded to the left, which eventually turns more tan. More to the left it starts to look more orange than tan.
Chromatography Strip

Chromatography seems to show it’s mostly slate blue and red-orange underneath. And it vaguely resembles a Bomb Pop popsicle!

Photo of chromatography paper under UV light.
Chromatography strip photo under UV light

Nothing too noteworthy under UV light, but there is a slight blue halo past the leading edge.

Clean-up Note

You know how red inks sometimes look like blood when you clean them up? Yeah, this ink has its own class of problems there. I suspect most brown inks would suffer similar fates.

I almost attached a photo but then realized it looked a little bit too much like poo on TP rather than ink wiped off a nib.

Verdict

I like it even more than I expected, and the scent adds to it without introducing any problems. So far it hasn’t given me any trouble either with my head or in a pen.

Based on a Mastodon Post

Updated:

Questions or comments? Contact me on Mastodon

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