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A brief history of instant coffee
- MikeTheGreat 6mo agoThanks for posting this! I started using instant coffee in hot chocolate as a quick DIY mocha, mainly because the cost-caffeine ratio was sooooo much better than beans (ground or whole) and the mix of ingredients that doesn't trigger any reflux (unlike the 400 mg / serving powdered energy drink I had been guzzling). Which is to say - this is a fun and interesting article about something I had just been taking for granted. It's really neat to learn about the trials and tribulations that folks went through to figure it out. Thanks for posting it! :)
- TacticalCoder 6mo ago> ... and the mix of ingredients that doesn't trigger any reflux Ah reflux! I drink way too much coffee since forever and recently asked my doc about it: he told me that if I had no reflux, then I simply shouldn't worry about it. Some people have reflux with coffee, others don't. I drink more coffee than 99% of the population and I get zero reflux. Since decades. It's a cool article but in a way many coffee became instant coffee: as my coffee machine is often already warm (wife btw she's also a heavy coffee drinker), it's actually more instant to have my full auto coffee machine ground the beans and make a coffee than it'd take to boil water for an instant coffee. Same for the people doing the (very costly compared to beans) capsule coffee thing: it's ultra quick (and one of the reason capsule coffee like Nespresso conquered so many). P.S: I'll try your mocha trick!
- marcellus23 6mo ago> I drink more coffee than 99% of the population How much is that?
- chronogram 6mo agoI could only find an article claiming 4% drink 6+ cups per day so a top 1st percentile coffee drinker must go much further beyond that. I'm guessing at least 2 litres per day.
- red369 6mo agoPiggybacking off your comment to advertise my new favourite. Very quick, and gets me having some of the protein powder I'm supposed to be drinking anyway. Does result in having to wash a blender though :) Blend: - Instant coffee (caffeinated or decaf) - 1/2 serve of chocolate flavoured protein powder (unfortunately this is obviously a vague/unhelpful quantity) - Milk - Ice cubes
- MikeTheGreat 5mo agoThat sounds really good! I'll have to give it a try :)
- firefax 6mo agoit's never instant because boiling water takes sooooo longgggg. apparently uk teakettles are faster due to voltage differences? i want to look for a usb-c solution sometime
- mikestew 6mo agoU. K. 240v vs. 120v in the U. S., twice the voltage == twice the amperage (EDIT: oops, wattage, for the same amps) == half the time to boiling. I will note that doubling the voltage will still not make it "instant". For that I think you need liquid oxygen[0]. [0] https://improbable.com/2018/10/26/a-look-back-at-george-gobles-prize-winning-barbecue-quick-ignition-triumph/ https://improbable.com/2018/10/26/a-look-back-at-george-gobl...
- softbuilder 6mo agoTwice the voltage == half the amperage for the same wattage. Are UK kettles higher wattage?
- mrwh 6mo agoActually yes, around double the wattage. It's one of the things English people notice when they move to the US (true!).
- gib444 6mo ago3000 glorious watts
- bombcar 6mo agoUS circuits are about 15 amps; UK ones similar - but twice the volts. So a US kettle is about 1500 watts, a UK one 3000. You can get commercial water boilers in the US if you need.
- rootusrootus 6mo agoor just use an insta-hot tap which is infinitely faster than an electric kettle. or a plain old kettle on an induction cooktop which will also be faster than a single purpose electric kettle.
- kiddico 6mo ago"I am very happy despite the rats, the rain, the mud, the draughts, the roar of the cannon and the scream of shells. It takes only a minute to light my little oil heater and make some George Washington Coffee . . . Every night I offer up a special petition to the health and well-being of Mr. Washington." Is my favorite part of the article lol
- chihuahua 6mo agoAccording to that guy: Being shelled in a trench and drinking instant coffee is better than living at home and making coffee from coffee beans. I guess there's a niche for everyone to be happy.
- jareklupinski 5mo agoi read it in Don Draper's voice
- gib444 6mo ago> which is why spray drying remains the dominant method I don't think I've ever seen spray-dried. Even the cheap supermarket instant coffee is mostly freeze-dried in the UK I believe. You can really see the power of marketing at play in instant coffee. A lot of 'premium' branded instant coffee is ~£42/kg. That's £3/kg more than my premium, locally-roasted, single-estate Colombian coffee beans. If you have more money than sense, there's even "Nescafe Gold Blend Cap Colombia" at £62/kg I do drink instant, but I stick to supermarket own-brand 'gold' that is around £13-18/kg (freeze dried). You just accept it'll be bad, and always drink with sugar and milk. I find the basic Nescafe has a distinct taste and not in a good way. I think a lot of people buy it for nostalgic reasons and not much else (well, excluding the brain-dead brand addicts)
- vient 6mo ago> A lot of 'premium' branded instant coffee is ~£42/kg. That's £3/kg more than my premium, locally-roasted, single-estate Colombian coffee beans. You need 7-10 times less instant coffee to make a cup though, so your beans are a lot more expensive in the end. From my experience, cup of coffee is either 2 grams of Nescafe Gold or 16 grams of beans.
- Error9632 6mo agoThe 7-10 times seems quite off. It’s pretty close to 5 times assuming common extraction yields about 20%. So instead of brewing 16g of coffee you could dissolve 3.2g of instant.
- miguel_martin 6mo agoIt's unfortunate that instant coffee has such as a bad reputation in the US. In Australia, instant coffee is very common (in the household); it's pretty good. I would much prefer a cup of instant coffee to most coffee that is served at diners, brunch/lunch restaurants, etc. in the US. I prefer espresso still, but there's a lot of burnt tasting coffee in America.
- odux 6mo agoIn Australia all coffee is pretty good. I visited Sydney fora week a couple years ago for business and the lattes and espressos blew my mind. I have had good coffee but that is a whole different level. After I have always been picky about coffee (mostly espresso drinks) and now I am even more pickier thanks to the amazing coffee I had there.
- xhevahir 6mo agoIn lots of Latin America instant is preferred. I don't remember but I think the historical explanation is that the whole beans were exported to wealthier markets, and the poorer consumers of coffee-growing regions had to settle for the cheaper product, which they eventually came to prefer.
- aragilar 6mo agoAs an aussie, I'd say instant is never good, it's the minimum acceptable coffee. If your coffee is worst than instant (yes, you LAX, how do you make coffee taste like literal dirt water!), then you should learn to make coffee properly!
- rawgabbit 6mo agoThanks for the article. I don’t know where it falls but I have been drinking the Nescafé Tasters Choice from Costco for two decades. Even that is getting a bit expensive so I have been scouring Asian stores for the instant Nescafé from Vietnam.
- themadturk 6mo agoThe only coffee we keep around is Walmart's 100% Columbian Arabica instant, a freeze-dried coffee that tastes great and, despite recent rises in price, is under $10 for a 7 oz. jar. I sometimes mix it with a tablespoon of Stephen's Dark Chocolate cocoa mix (which contains dry milk) for a poor man's mocha.
- dzonga 6mo agoyou hardly get good instant coffee in the US. however in the UK the premium supermarkets have really good instant coffee i.e M&S and Waitrose.