What Is The Best and Popular Instant Coffee？

The origin place of coffee is Ethiopia, before being introduced to Europe in the 17th century, it has been used as a beverage in North Africa and West Asia for hundreds of years. There are various coffee plantations in all hot and humid regions of the world, and coffee has become a popular beverage. But if you want to make a pot of delicious coffee, the making process is very complicated. Coffee beans must be ground into a fine powder, then use a filter to keep the coffee grounds out of the cup.

The complicated steps of making coffee inspire inventors to find an easy way to make a cup of coffee. The concept of “coffee compound material” first appeared not in the United States, but in the United Kingdom around 1771. However, due to the difficulty of its storage, the aroma will soon deteriorate, and the coffee can no longer be drunk. Therefore, its instant production method is only short-lived in history. As a result, there was no patent application and commercialization at that time.

Until 1853, before the Civil War, the Americans once again challenged the production of instant coffee, turning powdered coffee into solids, but the problem of coffee preservation still could not be solved, so the market for instant coffee was not good. Japanese chemist Kato Satori, who worked as a chemistry expert in Chicago, USA, once studied instant green tea, so some coffee importers and roasters found him, asked him to find a way to remove the moisture in the coffee.

Kato worked with some American chemists to develop a feasible method, the brewed liquid coffee is made as a dry powder after vacuum-dried, and the coffee concentrate is made. On April 17, 1901, Sato submitted a patent application to the United States, the application has elaborated on the problem of coffee preservation and the solution. On August 11, 1903, Kato obtained the “No. 735777” patent for “Coffee Concentrate and Its Making Process”. When he got the patent, Satori Kato didn’t realize that instant coffee could be commercialized.

In 1909, George Washington invented the technology for mass production of instant coffee and began the mass production of “Red E Coffee” and sold it to the market. Soon after, the First World War broke out in 1914, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Josephs Daniels gave the navy an order to ban alcohol. Although instant coffee did not taste very good at that time, due to the convenience of instant coffee, coffee became a substitute for alcohol, and soon occupied the mainstream beverage status in the navy, coffee became one of the armaments purchased by the U.S. military. But the technology at that time was backward and could not be preserved well, so instant coffee has not been spread all over the world.

By 1930, the Brazilian Coffee Association and the Swiss “Nescafe” company negotiated and asked them to try to produce a soluble coffee beverage to help solve the problem of overcapacity of Brazilian coffee beans, Nestlé spent 8 years make the research. In 1937, Nestlé successfully invented instant coffee with higher quality and better taste through the spray drying method. In 1938, instant coffee made by spray drying was named after “Nescafé” and sold. During the Second World War, “Nescafé coffee” was used as a munition for the U.S. Army, and spread all over the world after the war, letting people all over the world know about the existence of instant coffee.

More than half of the coffee beans in the world are used to produce instant coffee. Fast-paced life makes instant coffee beverages more and more popular. But some people are unfamiliar with the recipe and production process of instant coffee, they think that instant coffee is harmful to their health. But for food, it is meaningful to evaluate whether a beverage is healthy only through scientific analysis of nutrition and ingredients. Not all instant coffee is unhealthy, it mainly depends on what ingredients are in the coffee ingredient list.

In order to retain the flavor of coffee beans as much as possible, low-temperature extraction, freeze-drying, and instant soluble coffee production processes are more popular nowadays. But in the mass production process, from baking to extraction to drying, the aromatic substances contained in coffee beans are still unavoidably lost. Some coffee manufacturers add creamer, flavor, acrylamide, sugar, etc. to enrich the taste of instant coffee. Instant coffee containing non-dairy creamer, flavor, acrylamide, sugar, and other chemical ingredients is harmful to the health.

There are two types of instant coffee on the market, one is pure black coffee, the other is two-in-one or three-in-one coffee with coffee-mate or sugar added. Black coffee has a mellow taste, low caffeine content, natural formula, but a slightly bitter taste.

If you have the conditions or time, we suggest you drink freshly ground coffee with fresh coffee beans, this is the healthiest way to drink coffee. But if you don’t have the time and energy to make a cup of coffee every day, you can choose the more popular high-quality specialty instant black coffee. The ingredient list of this kind of coffee only contains coffee beans.

The specialty instant black coffee is a new type of instant coffee that has become popular in recent years, this kind of coffee is made by the freeze-drying method and no longer uses a high-temperature extraction method. Instead, use a low temperature to remove the water, which can better maintain the aroma of the coffee itself, and there is no need to add other chemical spices.

At present, most specialty instant coffees use Arabica beans as raw materials. Compared with Robusta, Arabica has better quality, better aroma, and flavor, and lower caffeine content, which makes it easier to accept black coffee for people.

According to statistics from the International Coffee Organization, China’s coffee consumption is growing at an annual rate of about 15%, which is much higher than the global average growth rate of 2%. It is estimated that China will become a trillion-level coffee consumption superpower by 2025.

Compared with other types of coffee consumed at home, instant coffee still occupies an important position in the Chinese coffee market. However, instant coffee is losing consumer’s interest and its market share, because consumption has been upgraded to higher-quality coffee types, the consumption upgrade problem faced by instant coffee is inevitable.

In view of the slow growth of instant coffee, coffee companies and manufacturers are turning their focus to other coffee categories, such as ready-to-drink coffee or capsule coffee. However, the instant coffee category still has a chance to regain consumer attention.

The image of fresh coffee in the minds of consumers is higher quality and more fashionable, while instant coffee is considered a cheap, low-quality choice, and at the same time, it is also considered unhealthy because of its additives. In order to get rid of the image of no quality and only a convenient coffee choice, the instant coffee category needs to incorporate high-end factors in the promotion of new products.

Companies and manufacturers can focus on promoting the use of high-quality coffee beans, more details about the coffee beans’ growth environment or production process, not just their origin places. Instant coffee producers can associate products with more fashionable concepts, such as cold brew or micro-ground coffee. These strategies have been adopted by some instant coffee brands around the world, such as Nescafe’s Gold series and the AZERA series.

In the early days, most instant coffees used steam-drying technology to evaporate water and process it into fine particles through distillation. As the moisture evaporates, part of the aroma of the coffee is taken away, therefore, sugar or other additives are usually added to increase the taste of coffee.

Freeze-drying technology is to make coffee freeze into ice rapidly in a low-temperature environment of tens of degrees below zero, then the ice is converted into vapor to remove under a higher vacuum, finally, it becomes the form of large particles. Since the drying process is carried out under low temperature and high vacuum, the aromatic substances with strong heat sensitivity are retained.

Therefore, freeze-dried instant coffee can retain more of the original coffee flavor, with a strong aroma and pure taste, most of them will not add sugar, non-dairy creamer, and other additives. Due to the cumbersome production process, the price of freeze-dried coffee is slightly higher than ordinary instant coffee, but the original flavor of coffee is better retained.

Instant coffee particles are hygroscopic, in other words, they will absorb moisture in the air. Therefore, they must be packaged in moisture-proof containers under low humidity conditions to keep the products dry until consumers buy and open them. In addition, in order to prevent the loss of aroma and flavor, the coffee packaging process should be carried out in a low-oxygen atmosphere (usually carbon dioxide or nitrogen).

At present, the packaging of instant coffee shows a diversified trend, including glass, plastic, and metal. However, glass packaging is the first choice for many manufacturers to pack bigger specification specialty instant coffee. Glass packaging was first used in Egypt in 1500 BC, and it has a longer history of use than metal packaging and plastic packaging.

As more and more high-end instant coffee products seek differentiated packaging in their products, glass bottle packaging has become the first choice. Because glass bottles are selected for creating differentiated packaging, which determines that glass bottle packaging corresponds to a Niche market.

The premium instant coffee made by the freeze-dried method is in the form of granules, not powder. Therefore, this type of coffee must be filled by the granule filling machine. The granule packaging machine is used to pack granular materials with better fluidity into the packaging container according to the specific measurement requirements. The granular instant coffee in the glass bottle can be filled with a semi-automatic or automatic instant coffee packaging machine according to the different degrees of automation.

If we want to determine which packaging equipment is needed for packaging such as Nescafe Gold, we must first analyze the structure of this packaging. The packaging of the Nescafe Gold glass bottle is mainly composed of labels, caps, and aluminum foil films. There are five types of packaging machines used – granular filling, labeling, capping, aluminum foil sealing, and automatic feeding.

If you want to use the semi-automatic instant coffee packaging machine, you will use the semi-automatic particles filling machine, the semi-automatic labeling machine, the manual bottle capping machine, and the semi-automatic aluminum foil film sealing machine. There are many models and configurations, and you need to provide detailed information such as material, bottle size, shape, label type, label size, and aluminum foil size to determine the most suitable machine.

Our semi-automatic instant coffee granule filling machine adopts the principle of weighing and measuring, vibration discharge. Two or four weighing hoppers can be customized according to the different requirements of the filling speed, and the weighing and unloading speed is fast.

The machine adopts the technology of automatic tracking of drop and accuracy, has its own error correction function, which has simple operation and high filling accuracy. The feeding bin is equipped with an adjustable baffle to adjust the flow of the unloaded material, to increase the packaging speed as much as possible. All parts in contact with materials are made of stainless steel, which is easy to clean and prevents cross-contamination.

An automatic feeding system is optional to realize the automatic control of material level and automatic feeding. The filling range is 30-6000g, and it can be filled with coffee in various bottles, cans, and pre-made bags. Manual instant coffee packaging machines are suitable for products with many filling specifications, low filling speed requirements, and low filling output.

If your coffee specifications are relatively small, the bottle size is single, and the production output is large, you can consider using an automatic coffee packaging machine. This solution has high packaging efficiency and a large initial investment, but it saves labor costs. After using the machine for half a year or a year, the labor cost saved is more than the purchase cost of the machine.

The automatic instant coffee granule packaging machine is suitable for filling any shape of the bottle or can container. It adopts a double cylinder with photoelectric counting technology, the container can be positioned automatically, no bottle, no filling, has accurate and fast filling speed.

The automatic instant coffee filling machine is a linear design, if you want to get a higher filling speed and the smallest filling error, we suggest you choose a multi-head combination scale for weighing and filling. Our granule filling machine has strong compatibility, can be well connected with other types of packaging machines.

Under normal circumstances, the granular instant coffee automatic filling line includes a bottle turntable, an automatic bottle washing and drying machine, an ultraviolet sterilization machine, an automatic instant coffee packaging machine, an automatic cap sorting machine, automatic bottle capping machine, automatic aluminum foil sealing machine, automatic labeling machine, and a collection table, you can freely choose to increase or decrease the machines according to your budget and filling requirements.

The above is a comprehensive analysis of the ingredients, production process, market positioning, packaging, and packaging equipment of the glass bottle instant coffee. If you have any questions about packaging instant coffee, please consult our sales engineers for free!

Sywen Packaging is a leading manufacturer and supplier of instant coffee filling packaging machines, our coffee packaging machines can be used to pack all kinds of instant coffee or ground coffee such as bottles, cans, and bags. We can also customize a full set of instant coffee packaging solutions from filling to palletizing for you. Contact us immediately to get the latest and most comprehensive packaging information about instant coffee!