Is Black Coffee Made by Directly Grinding Coffee Beans into Powder? Instant Coffee VS Pre-Ground Coffee and Freeze-Dried Instant Coffee Explained

Is black coffee just coffee beans ground directly into powder? Of course not~

There are many types of black coffee on the market such as Colombian coffee, Mandheling coffee, Brazilian coffee, etc. When purchasing, everyone must be careful to distinguish between instant coffee powder and pre-ground coffee powder.

What is Instant Coffee?

Simply put, instant coffee is dried coffee extract.

For instant coffee powder, you just need to add some hot water or hot milk, depending on your preference, and voila, you're making coffee. For most people, they worry that instant coffee might not have all the health benefits of regular coffee.

How is Instant Coffee Made?

Making instant coffee requires roasting and grinding coffee beans just like regular coffee.

Then the ground coffee beans are dissolved in hot water to extract flavor and aroma.

The coffee solution is dried to extract what we now call instant coffee.

The difference between various types of instant coffee lies in how the coffee extract is dried.

Based on the drying method, there are two main categories of instant coffee.

First is Spray-Dried Instant Coffee:

Spray-dried coffee is the fastest and most cost-effective type of instant coffee to produce.

In this method, the coffee extract solution is sprayed into a chamber containing very hot air.

The water droplets are immediately exposed to hot air, water evaporates instantly, and coffee powder falls to the bottom of the chamber.

Because the coffee extract evaporates too quickly, most of the flavor is lost through the spray-drying method.

Additionally, for spray-dried coffee, the resulting powder texture is usually too fine for most consumers.

The coffee powder often must undergo additional production processes to combine with grains to form coffee granules.

Second is Freeze-Dried Instant Coffee

Currently, freeze-dried coffee represents the highest quality of instant coffee.

Unlike spray-dried coffee, freeze-dried coffee retains all its flavor and aroma.

The only disadvantage of using this method to produce instant coffee is that the process is more complex and expensive.

In this method, the coffee extract solution is frozen until it completely solidifies.

The now frozen coffee extract is then broken into smaller particles.

The smaller frozen particles are dried in a medium-temperature vacuum.

As the frozen coffee particles warm up, the frozen water expands rapidly into gas through the sublimation process.

Once all water molecules have successfully sublimated, what remains is dry coffee particles.

Pre-Ground Coffee Powder

Pre-ground coffee powder is simply coffee beans ground in advance and stored in powder form. It's very convenient and can save the step of grinding beans. Currently, many coffee shops on the market offer this service, and FrontStreet Coffee does too. If you don't have the conditions at home, you can ask the baristas at FrontStreet Coffee~

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473