How is instant coffee made?
If you were to guess how coffee powder is made I am sure you would guess it right. This is the most generic and lay man description of how coffee is made.
· Coffee beans are roasted and ground
· Coffee decoction is extracted from the grounds
· This decoction extracted is dried. There are many ways of drying it and is company dependent.
· The residual powder from the dried decoction is instant coffee.
This is how instant coffee is created
There are two based methods of drying coffee. The decoction is converted to powder in two different ways and hence the form factor changes
The decoction is basically coffee and water. The water has to be taken out of the decoction to make it only coffee
This separation of coffee and water in the decoction is done in two basically different ways
1. Spray drying
2. Freeze drying
· Spray drying – This is the process in which the decoction is sprayed into a hot environment and because of the heat the water in the decoction evaporates and leaves out the powdered which is the coffee powder. See the word evaporate highlighted. Because to evaporate water the decoction has to be reheated it causes a loss of flavor and hence is considered a relatively inferior process of making instant coffee.
The decoction is sprayed in a fine stream for easy and quick evaporation of water therefore this method results in a fine powder of coffee. Mostly found in the BRU normal packs not in the BRU Gold packs.
Because the powder is too fine it causes some difficulty in the usage by the consumer. As a work around of for this, the fine powder is agglomerated into bigger particles. This makes it a tad easier to use. This kind of agglomeration can be seen in the Nescafe Classic packs
The fine powder from spray drying is visible in the image below
· Coffee beans are roasted and ground
· Coffee decoction is extracted from the grounds
· This decoction extracted is dried. There are many ways of drying it and is company dependent.
· The residual powder from the dried decoction is instant coffee.
This is how instant coffee is created
There are two based methods of drying coffee. The decoction is converted to powder in two different ways and hence the form factor changes
The decoction is basically coffee and water. The water has to be taken out of the decoction to make it only coffee
This separation of coffee and water in the decoction is done in two basically different ways
1. Spray drying
2. Freeze drying
· Spray drying – This is the process in which the decoction is sprayed into a hot environment and because of the heat the water in the decoction evaporates and leaves out the powdered which is the coffee powder. See the word evaporate highlighted. Because to evaporate water the decoction has to be reheated it causes a loss of flavor and hence is considered a relatively inferior process of making instant coffee.
The decoction is sprayed in a fine stream for easy and quick evaporation of water therefore this method results in a fine powder of coffee. Mostly found in the BRU normal packs not in the BRU Gold packs.
Because the powder is too fine it causes some difficulty in the usage by the consumer. As a work around of for this, the fine powder is agglomerated into bigger particles. This makes it a tad easier to use. This kind of agglomeration can be seen in the Nescafe Classic packs
The fine powder from spray drying is visible in the image below
The same powder is agglomerated. The Nescafe classics of the world look like the image below. They do not differ in taste as they are still spray dried coffee in a different form.
· Freeze Drying – This is a relatively better method when compared to spray drying. The decoction extracted is frozen to a solid. This solid is broken into small pieces. Now what we have will is frozen coffee. These frozen broken coffee pieces are put into a vacuum chamber and the temperature is increased. This increase in temperature causes the water which is in a solid frozen form to directly convert to vapor in vacuum. This process is called sublimation. The vacuum slowly sucks out the water vapor leaving out the coffee in the form of solid granules.
Because these pieces are broken parts of a larger block of frozen coffee the pieces are angular in shape just like broken ice. These are seen in Nescafe Gold or Bru Gold versions of coffee. Because the decoction is not heated for evaporation the flavor is much better than that of the spray dried coffee
See the angular granules in the picture below.
Because these pieces are broken parts of a larger block of frozen coffee the pieces are angular in shape just like broken ice. These are seen in Nescafe Gold or Bru Gold versions of coffee. Because the decoction is not heated for evaporation the flavor is much better than that of the spray dried coffee
See the angular granules in the picture below.