Brewing Coffee
instant coffee
Water-soluble “instant” coffees first saw light of cup in Britain in 1771. But the product had a short shelf life and went rancid fast, so the process had a short historical life and went away fast. An American attempt in 1853 was followed by a pre–Civil War cake of powdered coffee. Same deal: It wouldn’t keep, so it didn’t sell.
In 1901, just-add-hot water "instant"
coffee was invented by Japanese American chemist Satori Kato of Chicago.
Satori Kato was the Japanese inventor of soluble tea. A U.S. coffee importer
and a coffee roaster asked him to apply his dehydration method to coffee.
With the help of an American chemist, Kato worked out the details. His April
17, 1901, patent application explained the problem and how he solved it:
"The volatile oil is mixed with the solid aqueous extract, but I have
discovered that an attempt to effect this without other precaution results
in the production of a pasty sticky mass which does not resist rancidity,
but quickly spoils under the usual conditions of transportation and storage.
I have further discovered that the difficulty arises from the presence of
in the concentrate of the nonvolatile coffee-fat or at any rate is overcome
by its removal, which, I believe, I am the first to effect.
I separate the volatile oil and the fats from the coffee and remove the
fiber and reduce to a hard substance. This hard substance is reduced to
a finely divided condition and a portion thereof is pulverized and thoroughly
mixed with the pure volatile oil and dried, after which this mixture is
mixed with the remainder of the hard substance and used in this granulated
or flaky form or pressed into tablets".
Kato received U.S. Patent No. 735,777 on Aug. 11, 1903, for “Coffee Concentrate
and Process of Making Same,”
In 1906, English chemist George Constant Washington, invented the first mass-produced instant coffee. Washington was living in Guatemala and at the time when he observed dried coffee on his coffee carafe, after experimenting he created "Red E Coffee" - the brand name for his instant coffee first marketed in 1909. During World War I his instant coffee was supplied as part of the rations for U.S. troops
As the Great Depression gripped the United States in the 1930's and coffee sales plummeted there was a definite need for the coffee growers to find new ways to sell their product. Nescafe came to the rescue.
In
1930 the Brazilian government approached Nestle to create a new instant
coffee that would give the consumer another option and at the same time
increase the dwindling coffee exports of Brazil. It took eight years but
in 1938 Nestle introduced Nescafe.
Early methods of making instant coffee involved brewing a batch of high-strength,
concentrated coffee and then boiling it dry in stainless steel drums; the
residue left behind was instant coffee. The heat involved in the boiling
process destroyed most of the aromatic and flavourful properties of the
coffee. When reconstituted in water the result was a pungent, bitter decoction
that little resembled coffee.
Nescafe revolutionized
the way instant coffee was made.
Nestle developed a new process for dehydrating the concentrated coffee which
vastly improved the quality. In entailed spraying a fine mist of the solution
into a heated tower where the droplets turned to powder almost instantly.
They then added carbohydrates in the form of dextrose, dextrin and maltose
which helped preserve the flavour.
Nestle struggled to come up with a name for this new product which would
inspire the public to buy it. They combined the word Nestle and the Italian
word for coffee, caffee, or café in hopes that the Italian inference would
create an aura of romance and capture the imagination. Apparently it worked;
through an aggressive, and expensive, ad campaign that targeted the American
housewife Nescafe became a huge success for Nestle and doubled its global
market share.
Nescafé's improved instant coffee was supplied
the U.S. military in World War II.
Say what you will about the taste, instant coffee is fast and easy and doesn’t
take much equipment. Those are big advantages to an army in the trenches
or an army on the move.
Unfortunately the problem with instant coffee is it really doesn't taste
like real coffee. Until now!
With the instant coffee market estimated to be £6 billion per year, it is
easy to see why the well known global coffee shop chain is interested in
this market.
Possibly the most covert operation in Starbucks history.
Over nearly two decades, the project had
code names — Stardust, Jaws and Space Needle — and when Starbucks employees
took business trips to work on it, they didn't even tell their wives where
they were going.
Such was Starbucks' concern about people finding out that it was working
on instant coffee, long considered the dregs of the coffee world, far inferior
to espresso and brewed coffee.
Via
dates back to a 1993 prototype created by Don Valencia, he created a soluble
version of Starbucks coffee to take with him on camping trips that became
known internally as "JAWS," or Just Add Water and Stir. Executives
would ask coffee department workers to make them special batches of JAWS
when they were travelling to places where they didn't have access to Starbucks
brewed coffee.
After drinking JAWS on a trip to Africa in 2007, Mr. Schultz asked workers
who develop new products at Starbucks whether they could create a better
version of it to sell in stores. Working in top secrecy at Starbucks Seattle
headquarters, a small group of employees tasted 700 versions, trying to
eliminate the cereal-tasting flavour that can creep into instant coffee.
To make is soluble, Starbucks takes freshly roasted beans, grinds them and
then makes the brewed coffee into a concentrated extract that is dried into
a powdered form. A patent is pending for the product.
Shortly before Valencia died of cancer in late 2007, Schultz visited him
in the hospital and told him the company was finally going to roll out his
instant coffee, "Stardust."
The manufacturing method now being used is partly the accepted method of
making instant/soluble coffee, with an added twist. Starbucks has acknowledged
that it is working with a known maker of soluble coffee, and also that its
method is the spray-drying one, which allows for a powdered result.
The process is that we take Starbucks brewed (filter) coffee, concentrate it and dry it. “The patent-pending part is the ‘microground’ coffee – essentially, after the drying of the brewed coffee, we add more of the same coffee, which has been ‘microground’. This powder is finer than an espresso grind.
“You will notice that, unlike most soluble coffee,
a little sediment remains in the cup, as you would expect with a filter
coffee. This is the suspended solid matter, which gives the coffee its body.”
Starbucks VIA is just like drinking a filter coffee but with the ease and
speed of making an instant!