Instant Coffee

Instant Coffee is a popular drink prepared from the brewing of coffee beans. After going through various processes the coffee is dehydrated into a powdered form that when rehydrated with hot water gives the aromatic beverage. The biggest benefit of instant coffee is the short time it takes to prepare the drink, mainly for its dissolving in hot water instantly. It requires less powder quantity compare to the roughly ground coffee or beans to prepare same amount of coffee. Moreover, this instant coffee powder has more shelf life than the roughly ground coffee and coffee beans. But it has to be kept dry, preferably in tightly closed containers else it gets solidified to be wasted for it has the ability to absorb even the atmospheric humidity. The taste of instant coffee differs to a great extent from the taste of roughly ground coffee. In the Instant coffee powder, the caffeine content will be less and bitter components are more revealed. For commercial preparations, it uses a high extraction method to retrieve all properties from the roasted coffee beans.

History of Instant Coffee

The Instant Coffee was first invented by a Japanese scientist Satori Kato in 1901. George Constant Louis Washington, made his own instant coffee shortly and marketed commercially. The renowned brand Nescafe came up with upgraded coffee refining process in1938.

The most simple and easiest way of preparing coffee is undoubtedly by using the instant coffee by simply adding hot water to coffee powder to make your drink  ready. Instant coffee comes in a powdered or granulated form, packed in jars tins or sachets. Instant coffee is prepared through a vigorous extraction of all soluble material from ground coffee beans. It can be used for making iced coffee in warmer climates and hot seasons as well.

Roasting

The green coffee beans have to be roasted before using as coffee of any form. When the beans are roasted they bring out the flavor and aroma that are pertinant to rich coffee. Roasting cylinders, which use hot combustion gases are used for roasting the green coffee beans.

Grinding

This is the process, whereby the beans are reduced to very small particles say of the size of 0.5-1.1mm. These particles are added to a solution along with water, wherefrom it goes to the drying stage. This process is called extraction. The rollers used for grinding are designed to cut rather than crush the beans.

Extraction

In the process of extraction, water is added in 5-10 percolation columns between the temperature of 310 to 360 degree F to concentrate the coffee solution .This solution is concentrated before drying, either by vaccum evaporation or freeze concentration.

Drying

Drying is the most important stage in this process. There are two types of drying, one is the freeze drying and the other, spray drying. Freeze drying in instant coffee is the process of removing water by sublimation. This method is very popular, though a bit expensive. However, it gives good quality product. In the freezing stage, agglomerated wet coffee granules are frozen. The freezing has to be done very carefully because if freezing is done very fast or very porously the colour of the coffee granules gets affected. This frozen coffee beans is placed on a metal tray in a drying chamber. It then goes into a vaccum chamber, the vaccum created in this chamber is in relation and quality of the product. The drying chamber is warmed by the method of radiation. The water content in the granules expand to 10th of its size because of condensation. The water vapour thus formed, is removed in the freezer drying plant. The freezer dried granules are now removed from the chamber and sent for packaging. The spray drying method is less costly than the freeze drying method. It takes less time to dry and at the same time gives uniformly rounded particles.

 

 

 

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