20% of the coffee consumed in the world, soluble coffee is definitely no longer an outsider on the world coffee market!
So much so that it is worth taking a closer look to fully understand what we are consuming.
Is it different from bean or ground coffee? Is it bad for our health? 🙂
Difference between coffee beans, ground coffee and soluble coffee
Soluble coffee is coffee that, once ground, goes through various additional manufacturing steps described further down this page in order to extract a coffee liquor and dehydrate it completely.
This will then have the particularity of becoming a so-called soluble or even instant coffee because you just have to pour it into hot water to serve yourself a coffee (all the components will dissolve in the water),
not to be confused with ground coffee!
The ground coffee must undergo an extraction (filter coffee maker, espresso, etc.) to extract coffee separated from the coffee grounds,
while instant coffee has already been "extracted" to obtain a dehydrated powder of coffee liqueur to be drunk directly.
Instant coffee (or soluble coffee) has the advantage of being very quick and very easy to prepare , there is virtually no preparation. ^^
But instant coffee doesn't really get a good press among good coffee lovers.
Where does soluble coffee come from?
The origins of soluble coffee are now attested, this unusual preparation of coffee was originally intended for the French army (yes yes, French).
A certain Alphonse Allais filed the patent for it in 1881,
year in which he developed this preparation after his time in the army where the soldiers complained about the mediocre quality of the coffee they had,
in order to improve its conservation (soluble coffee keeps for a long time) but also its taste.
History then shaped soluble coffee for several decades before its very first commercial exploitation in 1938 by… Nestlé and its Nescafé brand! 🙂
Nescafé is still the leader in soluble coffee today , and it didn't steal it.
Is soluble coffee good for our health?
Instant coffee is indeed something to be jealous of. From a nutritional point of view, it will be difficult to take one's side because soluble coffee responds to its market:
- it is only rarely true coffee lovers who consume it and therefore, on an industrial scale, it is very unlikely that soluble coffee will benefit from an exceptional coffee before being processed .
Coffee is only good for your health if you consume quality coffee (see the benefits of coffee ), on top of that, soluble coffee undergoes more transformations before it ends up in your cup.
- I could read here and there that this transformation resulted in more compounds from the Maillard reaction in the coffee.
Responsible for the roasting of coffee, this chemical reaction is also at work in summer grills, for example, this burnt part of the meat that some love but that our body actually hates!
- A quick aside on caffeine, soluble coffee contains slightly less caffeine than a cup of filter coffee of equivalent volume.
Soluble coffee is not yet a healthy alternative to other forms of coffee preparation and, from my point of view at least, its only advantage is its speed of preparation and its simplicity for those who are ready to sacrifice the taste.
Since coffee is a dynamic and constantly evolving market , you should not look away too much and let your guard down,
manufacturers are particularly effective in finding new solutions, introducing us to new coffees, new manufacturing processes, etc.
I was myself surprised a few months ago to drink a soluble coffee that I didn't find so bad, for lack of anything better. 😉
Take a look, for example, at the coffee brand Sudden Coffee which, somewhat like a start-up, is trying to disrupt our perceptions and combine quality coffee and soluble coffee ...
The result ? We're going from coffee at 10 cents a cup to $1.50 a cup…yes, still for soluble coffee! This is definitely no ordinary instant coffee.
How about trying? 🙂
How to choose your instant coffee?
There are traditionally two methods of dehydration and the choice has a real impact on the result in the cup. Spray-drying or freeze-drying.
- Atomized coffee is coffee pulverized by a jet of pressurized hot air, slightly moistened afterwards and then undergoing a second, less powerful drying process.
Cheaper, this technique gives a particular aspect to the coffee which, during the last stages, will agglomerate in small heaps , typical coarse appearance of an instant coffee.
- Freeze- dried coffee is not an agglomerated coffee. It is a method of cold drying where the coffee is frozen, broken into fine particles and then thanks to a chemical process allowing the water to pass from the solid state to gaseous directly (process called "sublimation") we obtain our coffee liqueur powder much more regular and fine.
Since the coffee has not been exposed to high temperatures, it retains its nutritional and taste qualities better.
Small note on this subject , I have often seen so-called freeze-dried coffees taking on the same appearance as an agglomerated coffee.
The easiest way to be sure of what you are buying is to read the packaging label because, if it is a freeze-dried coffee, be sure that it is written somewhere: it constitutes a commercial argument!
Atomized/pulverized coffee is the most common and best-selling soluble coffee still today, but freeze-dried coffee is gaining ground.
It's up to you to choose now if you like instant coffee, you can choose between a more economical soluble coffee, atomized coffee, or freeze-dried coffee if you still prefer quality.