W HAT’S
DESI GNER: TY P E INS IG HT THAT STUF
OR HINDSIGHT A FFTER
instant coffee
The popular drink’s less popular, HIGHLY PROCESSED relative
COFFEE IS ONE of the world’s favorite
beverages. It is definitely my liquid of
choice, with all the invigorating caffeine,
great taste, and wonderful-smelling volatile
compounds such as 4-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-2-
butanone, which gives coffee a sweet, fruity
aroma. Organic, fair-trade whole-bean
coffee is my preference, but those with less
patience may desire long-lasting, easy-to-
prepare “instant” soluble formulations.
The Japanese were the first to produce
a stable instant coffee product in the early
1900s. During World War II, instant coffee
gained fame among American soldiers after
Nestlé marketed its Nescafé brand.
The instant beverage was updated in
1963, when Kraft introduced its Maxwell
House freeze-dried instant coffee, which
the company claimed tastes more similar
to fresh-brewed coffee than other instant
coffee products. Within a few years, all ma-
jor manufacturers had freeze-dried coffee
products on the market.
Taste and smell aside, most people drink
coffee in all of its incarnations for that
energizing alkaloid compound—caffeine.
According to the National Nutrient Data-
base for Standard Reference, instant coffee
has about two-thirds the caffeine content
of fresh-brewed coffee. More precisely, 8 oz
of freshly brewed coffee contains 95 mg of
caffeine, whereas the same amount of in-
stant coffee has only 62 mg of caffeine.
But the caffeine content of coffee de-
pends on many factors, including coffee
bean species, bean ripeness, and the roast-
ing and brewing processes. Thus, citations
of caffeine content in different coffee bev-
erages are reported with exceedingly wide
ranges, and the database figures are more a
rule of thumb than law.
All instant coffee production involves
roasting coffee beans and then brewing
them in hot water. Before the brew can
be further processed into instant coffee,
oxygen and insoluble particles such as cof-
fee grounds must be removed. After this,
the brew is dried by one of two methods to
yield instant coffee.
One common way to desiccate the
brew is through spray-drying: The coffee is
sprayed through a nozzle to produce tiny
300-μm-sized droplets that fall through
drying towers until they reach the base as
WWW.C E N- ONLI NE .ORG
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a parched powder. The drying towers are Today, most major
K E NNE TH MOORE /C &E N
kept at high pressures and temperatures manufacturers still use
near 270 ºC. The fine coffee powder a freeze-drying process to
may be rewetted to produce larger make their instant coffees,
granules that are dried and finally says Daniel Gedance, president of
packaged. SAAP. Although instant coffee is gener-
In the freeze-drying process, ally viewed as inferior to fresh coffee,
the brewed coffee is first frozen Juliet Morris, sales manager of Just
and then crushed to obtain the Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op, chooses
desired granule size. Standard to stock freeze-dried instant coffee
& Alternative Products (SAAP), because the freeze-drying process “most
which produces instant coffee closely allows the fresh-roasted flavor of
products, aims for granules of coffee to come through,” she says.
about 3 mm in diameter, for But some instant coffee manufactur-
example. Granules that are ers do not use the freeze-drying process
too large or small because of its prohibitive
are melted costs, Gedance says. Al-
and refroz- though the price of any
en. Frozen retail instant
granules of coffee is
the proper deter-
size are mined
placed in largely
low-pressure by costs
drying cham- related
bers at –50 ºC, to distri-
and the water bution,
is removed by freeze-dried
sublimation instant coffee
as the drying production costs
chamber warms. are 35% higher than
Both processes the costs of production
run the risk of by spray-drying, he notes.
losing compounds The freeze-drying process
that contribute to is more expensive because
the desirability of the making the same amount of
drink. For instance, caf- instant coffee by freeze-drying
feine sublimates at 180 ºC methods requires larger quanti-
at atmospheric pressure, so ties of better-quality beans than does
the high temperatures in spray-drying the spray-drying process.
chambers may affect instant coffee’s caf- Susan C. Jackels, a chemistry professor
feine content and the content of organic and coffee researcher at Seattle University,
compounds that provide taste and aroma. says that beans used for some instant cof-
Whichever process is used, the final prod- fee products could not be sold for use in
uct is often packaged under carbon dioxide roasted, ground coffee products. For some
or nitrogen because the presence of oxygen instant coffees, however, coffee “cherries”
will cause further loss of aroma and flavor. are stripped from plants at the end of the
season, whether they are ripe or not. Un-
ALL THIS PROCESSING means instant ripe beans add a bitter taste to coffees and
coffee contains little oxygen and has a wa- have a less-well-developed aroma.
ter content of only 1 to 4%—much lower For people on the go, instant coffee
than microbes need to grow—allowing the might be the best thing since sliced bread.
product to stay on the shelf for more than I, however, will stick to grinding my own
two years without spoiling. beans.—KENNETH MOORE
42 S E PTE M BE R 2 9, 20 0 8