Before the 50’s, in order to get a cup of coffee you would have to get the ground beans and brew it. This takes time. But when instant coffee was introduced, it suddenly changed the lifestyle of people as well. Because of the easy preparation, you just need to add water, coffee found new markets to expand to. Other opportunities opened as well. Later, instant coffee is combined with various other ingredients to create various coffee blends. You can now find instant coffee with creamer and sugar, with hazelnut, with mint and even with chocolate flavors in them.

Creating instant coffee is a simple process really. Manufacturers found out that by brewing huge quantities of fresh coffee and allowing a huge amount of water to evaporate, the result was a highly concentrated batch of coffee. Now the process does not end there, of course. Manufacturers will have to make this big batch of concentrated coffee into powder form in order to pack them and sell them as instant coffee.

Instant coffee plants use two kinds of methods to produce the instant coffee that we know today. The two techniques are the freeze-drying and the spray-drying technique. For the first method, the concentrated coffee is frozen to a temperature of about negative 40 degrees Celsius. At this temperature, the water in the coffee will become ice crystals. As crystals, the water can then be removed through sublimation and what remains are the frozen granules of coffee. Meanwhile, with the spray-drying technique, the concentrated coffee is sprayed up together with hot air. As the water falls it evaporates and what falls is the powdered coffee. Take note that both processes, because of the use of extreme temperatures, results in a loss of the coffee’s flavor. But the application of extreme heat in the spray-drying methods seems to cause more loss in the coffee’s natural flavor.

Even though instant coffee began making its popularity in the 50’s, the first instant coffee was invented as early as 1901 by Japanese American chemist Satori Kato. Five years later, English chemist George Constant Washington came out with a way to mass-produce instant coffee and introduced his “Red E Coffee” in 1909. Then in 1938, Nescafe invented the freeze-dried coffee process.

After the Second World War, the National Research Corp. which during the war created a high-vacuum technology to produce penicillin and blood plasma for the military, decided to use the technology for producing powdered orange juice. Later the company which has been renamed as Minute Maid perfected the process and applied it in making instant coffee. By 1951, the instant coffee developed from this method came out under the name Holiday Brands. The instant coffee has developed into a mean cup since then.

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Related Terms: chocolate flavors, coffee blend, coffee blends, coffee plant, coffee plants, creamer, cup of coffee, fresh coffee, instant coffee