Who's drinking the beverage? China. Chinese are one of the largest consumers of instant coffee. India is a close second. The ease of instant coffee makes it a big seller in these countries. No need to brew. Just add hot water and drink.
What is instant coffee? It is coffee. In fact it's brewed coffee which has been freeze dried or gone through a spray drying process. Freeze drying is the most popular method.
Look through this narrative from Nestle, the world's leader in instant coffee.....
HOW COFFEE IS MADE
Turning green coffee beans into high quality soluble coffee products requires a great deal of expertise and technical know-how...
Blending
The character of coffee beans varies naturally from region to region, from season to season, and by variety. Arabica beans produce a rich, smooth, aromatic coffee flavour, while Robusta coffee has a strong, harsher flavour with more body. There is great skill involved in tasting samples of the various beans and selecting the right blend to produce a high quality, distinctive soluble coffee.
Roasting
The flavour and aroma of coffee beans are brought to life by the roasting process. Temperature and time are carefully controlled to develop the coffee's flavour to the full. In general, a light roast gives a mild taste, a medium roast produces a well-rounded, rich flavour and aroma, and a high roast gives a strong, distinctive flavour.
Grinding
The roasted coffee beans are then ground into a coarse powder. This is the same as ‘Roast & Ground’ coffee which you might buy in your local supermarket or coffee shop.
Extraction
The roast and ground coffee is put into a series of extraction cells. These do the same job as a domestic coffee percolator or filter coffee maker - extracting the coffee flavour, aroma and colour from the coffee grounds into hot water. A series of cells is used producing stronger and stronger coffee, until the coffee consists of a highly concentrated liquor.
Drying
Soluble coffee is produced by drying the liquor in one of two ways. In spray drying, the liquor is sprayed into a stream of hot air at the top of a tall cylindrical tower. As the droplets fall, they dry, falling to the bottom of the cylinder as a fine powder. In freeze-drying, the liquor is frozen to about -40°C to form a thin layer. This is broken into tiny pieces, and then subjected to a vacuum. The vacuum lowers the boiling point of the water sufficiently so that it evaporates even at these very low temperatures, helping to preserve the coffee flavour, and leaving behind the solid soluble coffee.
Spray-drying is used for most soluble coffees, whereas freeze-drying is used for the more expensive, higher quality coffees.
Agglomeration
Soluble coffee granules are produced from the powder produced by spray-drying by a process called agglomeration. The powder is wetted slightly so that the particles stick together, and then the resulting granules are sieved so that only particles of the same size are filled into jars.
Aromatisation
In the NESCAFÉ range, the beautiful aroma of freshly ground coffee is captured during the grinding process, and added back to the coffee just before it is filled into jars.
Filling
The soluble coffee powder or granules are filled into glass jars or sachets. Filling is carried out in an inert gas atmosphere, to prevent any deterioration of the flavour or aroma of the coffee during storage.
One thing which kind of disturbed me was the fact they put aroma back into the jars. Do I want to know how that's done?
In Europe I've had instant coffee. It's in hotels, hostels, B and B's. You can't avoid it. It isn't bad, but give me a cup of fresh coffee, and I think that's heaven.
Charile
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