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If you are talking to Americans about coffee, your discussion will focus more on brewed coffee. Americans are not instant coffee drinkers, compared to people in Finland. Some people even think that instant coffee is weak or fake.

Do you know what instant coffee is, or the difference between coffee made from whole coffee beans and instant coffee?

Instant coffee

Making instant coffee is more cost-efficient and faster to produce than preparing regular coffee. You add hot water to instant coffee and you'll have a nice cup of coffee in no time. But there is no truth to what others think – that instant coffee is fake.

Instant coffee is produced from whole coffee beans. The beans are roasted, ground, and brewed. Water is removed from the ground coffee, leaving dehydrated coffee crystals.

Production process

Manufacturers produce instant coffee through freeze-drying or spray-drying process.

In spray drying, they spray liquid coffee concentrate as a fine mist in hot air. The temperature is about 480 °F (248.8 °C). The hot air dries the coffee mist and turns them into small crystals when they reach the ground.

In the freeze-drying process, the liquid coffee is cooked until the liquid content evaporates and you get an extract. The extract is chilled at a temperature of about 20 °F (-6.6 °C). The process turns the coffee extract into slush. The chilling process continues as the temperature is lowered to about -40 °F (-40 °C). At this stage, the coffee forms into frozen slabs that will be broken down later into granules. The slabs are sent into a drying vacuum that vaporizes the ice, leaving the instant coffee granules behind.

The caffeine content in instant coffee

Instant coffee contains less caffeine. This is an additional benefit for people who want to reduce their caffeine consumption. Regular coffee usually contains about 70 to 140 mg of caffeine. On the other hand, instant coffee only has about 30 to 90 mg of caffeine.

The early forms of instant coffee

The entry in The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink says that the first version of instant coffee came out in 1771. Late in the 19th century, a company in Glasgow invented Camp Coffee. It was a liquid essence made with chicory, coffee essence, sugar, and water. The product became a retail product in Great Britain around the middle of the 1800s.

In the U.S., the earliest mention of instant coffee on record was during the Civil War. The instant coffee was easy to carry and the soldiers can easily have a burst of energy when they need it.

Folger's and Maxwell

The company of James Folger, located in San Francisco, came out with the first canned ground coffee in the mid-1800s. Maxwell House came out with their version soon after but both companies will introduce instant coffee only after the end of the Second World War.

Coffee powder 

Cyrus Blanke introduced coffee powder to the retail market in 1906. A European immigrant introduced refined coffee crystals made from brewed coffee in 1910. This was the introduction of the first commercial instant coffee in the U.S.

Nestlé

Nestlé introduced instant coffee in 1938 by launching Nescafe. The company produced instant coffee by spraying liquid coffee on heated towers, creating dehydrated coffee crystals.

In the past, coffee was hailed as a beverage that is bad for your health. But continuous research revealed that instant coffee has many health benefits, including more antioxidants than regular coffee. Instant coffee increases metabolism and improves brain function.