It is necessary to know the "birth story" of instant coffee

As the saying goes, laziness is the driving force of technological progress. When it comes to eating and drinking, people also pursue convenience and speed. For example, coffee beans have to be ground into powder and then boiled before drinking, which is too troublesome. So instant coffee was invented. Just open the bag, pour it into a cup and add some water. This is simply a benefit for lazy coffee lovers.

Although instant coffee is convenient and fast, some people believe that the aroma of instant coffee is lost during the processing, and chemical flavors are used to make up for it. In addition, the coffee beans used are of low quality. Is this really the case?

Today, let’s talk about the “birth story” of instant coffee and learn about its history and production process.

The birth of instant coffee

To talk about the history of the birth of instant coffee, we have to start with the food giant Nestlé.

Nestlé was founded in Vevey, Switzerland. In 1867, German food technician Henry Nestle immigrated to Switzerland and established the Nestlé company named after himself, specializing in the research and development and sales of infant formula.

In the course of Nestlé's development, it has experienced mergers and name changes with other companies, and has also acquired other companies. Of course, in addition to milk powder, Nestlé has also sold condensed milk, chocolate and instant food.

After reading this, do you feel that although they are both in the food business, Nestlé and instant coffee seem to have nothing in common?

The reason why Nestlé developed instant coffee can be traced back to Brazil’s excessive coffee production in 1930.

As we all know, Brazil is a world-renowned coffee producing country, and Brazilian coffee has always had a high output.

In 1930, Brazil experienced a huge surge in coffee production, and the supply of Brazilian coffee on the market far exceeded demand.

Suffering from the inability to preserve coffee beans for long periods of time, Brazilian coffee farmers can only dump large amounts of coffee beans into the sea or burn them.

Later, the Brazilian government was worried that there would be a famine, which would lead to a poor coffee harvest and affect the country's revenue, so it approached Nestlé and commissioned it to develop espresso that could dissolve instantly while retaining its original aroma.

Some of you may be confused after reading this. Why does the Brazilian government choose Nestlé, a company far away in Switzerland, to develop instant coffee?

The first reason is that by 1930, Nestlé was already a world-renowned food company.

The second reason is that Nestlé has its own independent technology research and development base - Nestlé Technology Co., Ltd. Although Nestlé Technology Co., Ltd. is called a company, it is actually a food research laboratory. It is not only large in scale, but also has the most advanced equipment and research and development technology in the world.

In the same year (1930), Nestlé, which accepted the commission from the Brazilian government, received strong foreign aid. Max Morgenthal, an authority in the coffee industry and a chemist, joined the Nestlé team and led the team to start developing instant coffee.

After eight years, Nestlé finally used spray drying technology to develop a coffee powder that can be quickly dissolved in water while retaining its original aroma.

On April 1, 1938, this coffee powder was officially put into production, and the world's first batch of instant coffee was born.

Freeze drying

In 1965, Nestlé revolutionized the production technology of instant coffee. They used freeze-drying to create a more advanced instant coffee.

The instant coffee production technology widely used today - FD freeze-drying method (vacuum freeze-drying method), is optimized based on Nestlé's freeze-drying method.

Freeze drying process:

The coffee beans are first sent to the tube building outside the factory for storage. One tube building can store nearly 560 tons of beans.

The beans are then sent to the oven and roasted at 200 degrees. The beans in the oven are constantly stirred to prevent local temperatures from being too high, resulting in uneven roasting or even burning.

After roasting, the grinder grinds the coffee beans into a coarser powder.

In the super-large coffee machine, the flavor of the coffee powder is squeezed out by hot steam under high pressure. Every hour, 18,000 liters of coffee can be squeezed out. The coffee is then heated and extracted until it is concentrated into essence, and then sent to the freezer by a conveyor belt.

The temperature in the freezer reaches minus 50 degrees Celsius, and workers must wear thermal clothing to enter. In order to preserve the aroma of the coffee, the next step of extracting the coffee must be done in a frozen state, at least minus 40 degrees Celsius. The espresso on the conveyor belt will be frozen into ice during transportation.

At the end of the conveyor belt, the frozen coffee will be crushed. But the coffee frozen into ice cubes still contains water, which needs to be removed to make instant coffee, but if the coffee ice is allowed to melt, the aroma will be lost. How can the water be removed without letting the coffee ice melt?

The solution is to put the coffee ice cubes into trays, pile them up, and then place them in a low-pressure pipe for 5 hours. When heated to 60 degrees in the vacuum environment of the pipe, the water will sublime directly from solid to gas under pressure.

When the coffee in the tray comes out of the pipe, it has become frozen but dry coffee powder. The aroma will be locked and will not be lost at room temperature. This is the core of freeze-dried coffee production. However, due to the high cost of low-temperature freezing and vacuum heating equipment, some low-quality instant coffee will use the method of spray drying and adding flavors.

The trays are then rotated and the ground coffee is poured into bags, ready for packaging.

The glass container passes through a conveyor belt and a carafe of coffee is filled in less than a second.

Spray drying and freeze drying

Finally, let’s take a look at the application characteristics of spray drying and freeze drying in the production process of instant coffee.

Advantages of spray drying:

▅ Volume has a positive effect, solubility in water increases

▅ This is a relatively simple and short process

▅ Drying by spray drying is cheaper than freeze drying, so spray dried products are cheaper than freeze dried products

▅ The capacity of a spray dryer is much larger than that of a freeze dryer.

Disadvantages of spray drying:

▅ The product is exposed to high temperatures, which damages the product performance

▅ The product takes on a high temperature almost immediately and sends its liquid into the warmer air.

▅ A dry liquid that can hardly be heated by its nature without significantly changing the product properties.

▅ The spray dryer is constructed in such a way that the lubricant can come into contact with the product that needs to be dried.

▅ Due to high temperature, the aroma, color and taste of the powder will be affected.

Advantages of freeze drying:

▅ Advantages of freeze-dried products:

▅ Volume has a positive effect, solubility in water increases

▅ After rehydration, the product has the properties of the original product at the strength level

▅ Short product preparation time

▅ Product properties remain unchanged because the drying process is carried out at low temperatures.

▅ Excellent product quality

▅ The product structure remains intact, which is why the product can absorb liquid again after the drying process

▅ The quality of freeze-dried products is very good, mainly because the temperature is kept low throughout the process.

Disadvantages of freeze drying:

▅ The whole process is very costly and takes a long time to dry

▅ This is why the product is 10 times more expensive than spray-dried products

▅ Freeze drying is an energy-intensive process

▅ Freeze drying requires a large investment

Of course, no matter how advanced the processing procedures are, the aroma of instant coffee will still be lost under the current technical level. However, those who are heavily dependent on caffeine don’t have to worry, because the caffeine in instant coffee will not be reduced.