- Coffee facts
Instant coffee for coffee lovers?
Let’s be honest: Most coffee fans turn up their noses when it comes to instant coffee. And rightly so if it’s an industrial instant. Mount Hagen instants are different. Completely different. And there’s a reason for that:
Karsten Suhr
Quality. Quality. And quality.
The 1st principle for really good instant coffee is: Really good beans. How could good coffee be made from bad beans? That’s why the basis for our instant coffee is the same as for our ground coffee: A blend of the finest Arabicas from Papua New Guinea, Peru, and Honduras.
The 2nd important aspect of producing a really good instant coffee is the roasting. As for us, the roasting is done just as carefully and gently as with our other coffees, at around 390 °F. The coffee is then ground and extracted. In other words, it is brewed. In very large machines, of course, in which the aromas are gently transferred to the water (extraction). The result is the so-called coffee thin juice, from which water is then removed until it becomes coffee thick juice.
What comes next is freeze-drying, the third essential quality feature of a delicious instant coffee. Here, the coffee concentrate is whipped with air or CO2 to form a soft ice cream like foam and deep-frozen at minus 40 -50° to form ice sheets in a vacuum, to remove the ice crystals. After this process, the freeze-dried sheets are broken and out comes an aromatic instant product.
It all depends on the size.
You can tell from the structure of an instant coffee whether it has been freeze-dried or spray-dried. Spray-dried coffee is a fine powder, freeze-dried coffee is a somewhat coarser granulate. Spray-drying is cheaper than the freeze-drying process, but the heat process also causes the coffee to lose some of its aroma. That is why all Mount Hagen instants are always freeze-dried
A star was born.
The history of instant coffee is quite long: The first, a spray-dried coffee, was invented by Frenchman Alphonse Allais back in 1881. In 1890, New Zealander David Strang (Strang coffee) patented it. And in 1938, Nestlé launched “Nescafé” on the market. The industrial instant was born.
Instant coffee is now much more popular than you might think: It accounts for an incredible 25% of the global coffee market – and the trend is rising. However, there are big differences between countries. “While the market share of instant coffee in the United Kingdom is an insane 75%, in Italy it is just 1%”(source: BBC.com). And in the USA?
“Americans drank an estimated 517 million cups of coffee daily in 2022 spending almost $110 billion on the beverage that year. Cold brews, expresso-based beverages and perfectly roasted beans are among the top drinks for today’s coffee aficionados. But one segment of the U.S. market has given up ground. Instant coffee, the kind that dissolves in hot water, has seen consumption fall to just 4% of American coffee drinkers. By comparison 25% of the coffee consumed globally is instant.” (Quelle CNBC)
Yummmm!
And that’s how it tastes, the instant coffee. At least that’s the case for Mount Hagen instants. We in the editorial team were particularly taken with the new instant espresso. Not (or not only) because it is quickly brewed with hot water. And because you can take it anywhere in the small, practical jar. It is full-bodied, opulent, has chocolate and nutty notes and a fine, refined acidity. Perfect as a quick and tasty energy boost. If you don’t want to lug around a portafilter machine in your backpack, it is a very good alternative. Definitely worth trying. Also (and above all) for coffee fans.
