feif un- thank you for this thorough comment. I remember very clearly the shittah that you bring down from R’Moshe zz’l and in those yeshiva days we did accordingly. (cherrybim-there is no difference between brewed or instant coffee)Not only for havdalah but also for shabbos morning kiddush, the halocho is the same.BTW- milk was allowed by the Hungarian gedolim but I think that the Chaya Adom in his sefer ‘zichru toras moshe’ disqualifies milk.
I did not know that Rav Ovadia Josef shelita disagrees. I’d love to see his teshuvo. I fail to see what “bitter’ has to do with ‘chamar medinah”. Wine is not bitter and neither is sweet liqueur. His logic about drinking before shacharis is a puzzle to me. As far as I know, you cannot be “jotzeh’ kiddush before you daven shacharis,regardless of what the drink is. I also never heard of your chumroh when not having wine. Routinely, people make kiddush on hard drinks every shabbos morning and some chassidische gedolim prefer “Jash-jajin sorof” over wine in the morning. This is even when there is wine in next room.You’ll have to show me the source of your chumro on when you can use ‘chamar medinah”.