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A brief history of instant coffee

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Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#41

Post by red369 »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #2

Thanks 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 gra…

Piggybacking 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

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#42

Post by jbaber »

kccqzy wrote: post #30
firefax wrote: post #3

it'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

USB-C PD has far lower wattage than the wall outlet anywhere in the world. Now I want someone to build a kettle that accepts a J1772 connection (for charging electric vehicles). That’s nowadays more common than any 240V NEMA outlets.

technologyconnections has connected several things to his car charger, including kettles

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#43

Post by ssl-3 »

firefax wrote: post #3

it'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

I just made a cup of tea, here in the States[1], using science (which means I wrote it down).

I started with 300ml of water that I measured at 68.5F.

I dumped that into the Sunbeam Hot Shot[2] "hot water dispenser" that lives on my countertop (which is labeled as using 1450 Watts).

I pushed the go button and started a clock. It took 1 minute, 29 seconds to reach what I considered to be a rolling boil.

That's pretty good, I think. I could futz around with keeping a hot electric kettle going during the day and maybe save some time on everything after the first cup, but meh. This seems quick-enough, to me, and also avoids all chances of flash-boiling water in the microwave[3].

---

But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is the math.

At my elevation, I added about 100kJ of heat to the water over those 89 seconds.

If the input power is 1450W (I didn't measure that; I just read it from the back), then ~23% of it was lost. Wherever it went (heating the appliance itself, evaporative cooling, whatever), that power was not included the final state of the water. That's hugely inefficient as a percentage.

But if electricity costs $0.19 per kWh, then I only spent about 7/10ths of 1 cent to boil this 300ml cup of water. (I could add or subtract 23% and it would still be an irrelevant part of my power bill.)

The cheap store-brand black tea cost me $0.0218 per bag.

So a cup of hot tea was a bit less than 3 cents. Not bad!

---

[1]: The freedom to use cursed units

[2]: The Sunbeam machine is no longer available, which sucks. They're simple electromechanical devices with no smarts at all and only a couple of moving parts, and I recommend one to anyone with 120v outlets who likes hot beverages one-cup-at-a-time.

[3]: I did that once. I reached into the microwave for a cup of hot water and it boiled explosively as soon as I moved it. It was very sudden and surprisingly painful. The first-degree burns healed up over the next couple of days. 0/10; worth taking extra steps to avoid.

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#44

Post by xhevahir »

miguel_martin wrote: post #34

It'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.

In 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.

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#45

Post by maxbond »

Error9632 wrote: post #36
vient wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The 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.

For what it's worth I just checked my store brand instant, and the serving suggestion is 1.9 grams.

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#46

Post by chihuahua »

kiddico wrote: post #24

"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

According 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.

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#47

Post by chihuahua »

maxbond wrote: post #10
firefax wrote: post #3

it'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

The good news is that boiling water is not functionally necessary since the extraction was done up front. I drink it cold or with warm water. Boiling is hotter than I want to drink anyway. If there's significant scale at the bottom it's possible it's making your kettle materially less efficient. If you put in like a cup of vinegar and a cup of water (you could probably dilute it more than that), heat it up and swish…

I found that 160F to 180F is enough for instant coffee, depending on personal taste and what you feel like at that moment. I have an electric kettle that has a several buttons for different temperatures, and heating only to 180F saves time over heating to boiling, plus I can drink it right away.

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#48

Post by rawgabbit »

Thanks 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.

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#49

Post by themadturk »

The 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.

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#50

Post by aragilar »

miguel_martin wrote: post #34

It'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.

As 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!
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