INSIGHTS

From Crop to Cup: How Coffee is Made

APRIL 5, 2022

Turning green coffee beans into high-quality soluble coffee requires a great deal of expertise
and technical know-how. Here are the eight steps that transform the humble bean into your
favourite cup of NESCAFÉ® coffee (or nine steps if you prefer your NESCAFÉ decaffeinated).

Step 1. Blending

The character of coffee beans varies naturally from region to region, season to season and
variety to variety. Arabica beans produce a rich, aromatic flavour, while Robusta coffee has a

more intense 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.
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 coffee.

Step 2. 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.

“There is great skill involved in tasting samples of the various beans and
selecting the right blend.”

Step 3. Grinding

The roasted coffee beans are then ground into a coarse powder. This is the same technique
that’s used for ‘Roast & Ground’ coffee which you might buy in your local supermarket or
coffee shop.

Step 4. 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 from the
coffee grounds into hot water. This happens using controlled pressure and temperature
conditions which makes the extraction process very efficient.

Step 5. 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  more
expensive, higher quality coffees.

“We capture the beautiful aromatics which are released during the grinding
process
process””

Step 6. Agglomeration

Soluble coffee granules are produced from the powder produced by spray-drying through a
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 process called agglomeration. The powder is wetted slightly so that the particles stick
together and the resulting granules are sieved so that only particles of the same size are
filled into jars.

Step 7. Aromatisation

In the NESCAFÉ range, we capture the beautiful aromatics which are released during the
grinding process.

Step 8. 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.

Step 9. Decaffeination

Caffeine is a mild stimulant* which occurs naturally in coffee and a number of other plants,
such as tea. While this property of coffee is often desirable, many people prefer the caffeine
to be removed.

This is done at the green bean stage, before the beans are roasted. There are three main
methods in use today, all of which use the same first step: the beans are treated with steam
to make them porous, which allows the caffeine to be removed.

The oldest method used an organic solvent to dissolve out all of the caffeine. More recently,
a process using carbon dioxide under high pressure was developed. However, decaffeinated
NESCAFÉ coffees in the UK have always used a process which uses water to dissolve the
caffeine. In this process, the coffee beans are steeped for a time in hot water, which
dissolves the caffeine and some of the flavour compounds. This liquid is then passed
through activated carbon, which removes the caffeine. The liquid (now minus most of the
caffeine) is then re-integrated with the coffee beans to put back the flavour compounds
which were removed along with the caffeine. The beans are then dried, ready for roasting in
the normal way.

*British Coffee Association, 2016

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