A brief history of instant coffee • Hacker News Board

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#61

Post by firefax » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 7:51 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #55

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

Most people boil too much water. Get a kettle that can take a smaller amount of water and then boil what you need. If that’s not good enough, you can get a kettle that keeps water warm and then you don’t need so much energy to boil it (or figure out a routine or trick to turn the kettle on earlier, eg a teasmade). If you want to throw money at the problem USB-C is not the answer (how does that even make sense??) but…

>If you want to throw money at the problem USB-C is not the answer (how does that even make sense??)

I thought maybe it could use a capacitor or something? I'm not an electrical engineer -- all I know is we have half the voltage here, and I've seen things like USB plates before -- the older type of USB... and USB C can power a laptop.

So I thought, since the English love their goddamn tea so much, they'd probably have a USB-C teakettle if such a thing is possible, and then I wouldn't need an adapter (if an adapter is even possible for higher voltage appliances like that).

Mine takes four minutes. Minutes are short in the morning in America :-(

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#62

Post by dan-robertson » Fri, Apr 10, 2026, 11:04 PM UTC

firefax wrote: post #61

dan-robertson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people boil too much water. Get a kettle that can take a smaller amount of water and then boil what you need. If that’s not good enough, you can get a kettle that keeps water warm and then you don’t need so much energy to boil it (or figure out a routine or trick to turn the kettle on earlier, eg a teasmade). If you want to throw money at the problem USB-C is not the answer (how does that even make sense??) but…

>If you want to throw money at the problem USB-C is not the answer (how does that even make sense??) I thought maybe it could use a capacitor or something? I'm not an electrical engineer -- all I know is we have half the voltage here, and I've seen things like USB plates before -- the older type of USB... and USB C can power a laptop. So I thought, since the English love their goddamn tea so much, they'd probably hav…

The voltage isn’t really the limiting thing (you actually get 220 volts to almost any American home for some appliances like A/C or cookers). The issue is that the regular 110V circuits aren’t meant for more than 15A and that then limits the amount of power coming from your wall. If you change the voltage, you’re still bottlenecked by the power from your wall (and it is that power that is almost all turned into heat to boil the water).

A capacitor is too small but you could imagine a kettle with a battery to deliver more power than it can get out of the wall.

I shouldn’t have been snarky about your USB-C comment. I’m sorry.

Re: A brief history of instant coffee

#63

Post by MikeTheGreat » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

red369 wrote: post #41

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

That sounds really good! I'll have to give it a try :)