Why Is Freeze-Dried Coffee So Popular? What's the Difference Between Instant Coffee and Freeze-Dried Coffee?

Understanding Freeze-Dried Coffee: Beyond the Instant Coffee Stigma

Recently, freeze-dried coffee has gained significant popularity. In our café, we often hear customers discussing it, with many enjoying pour-over coffee while also purchasing popular freeze-dried coffee products for variety. So what exactly is this freeze-dried coffee everyone's talking about? FrontStreet Coffee would like to share some knowledge about this topic.

Actually, freeze-dried coffee isn't a new product. Strictly speaking, it belongs to the instant coffee category. Yes, that's right—the one at the bottom of the "coffee鄙视链" (coffee snobbery chain)—instant coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee Note: Coffee has no inherent superiority or inferiority, and a "snobbery chain" shouldn't exist. However, it does exist in reality and must be acknowledged.

The History and Technology of Instant Coffee

This brings us to the history and technology of instant coffee. The moment we consider instant coffee to have officially appeared was in 1901, when Japanese-American chemist Satori Kato and his team in Chicago, USA, created coffee powder by using vacuum drying on coffee solution.

It wasn't until 1937 that Nestlé invented the "spray drying method" to produce instant coffee, which established the foundation for future instant coffee production processes. This method is essentially based on heat drying principles. First, roasted coffee beans are dissolved in water to extract coffee substances—in simple terms, it's like industrial-scale coffee brewing. Then, the coffee liquid is sprayed through nozzles into countless tiny droplets that enter a high-temperature drying chamber. This allows water to evaporate easily, leaving behind powdered solid instant coffee.

This production method has relatively low costs and became the mainstream instant coffee manufacturing process. Due to high-temperature processing, many coffee flavors are lost, leaving only a very bitter coffee taste. Therefore, it's often used to make "2-in-1," "3-in-1" coffee products and price-competitive "instant black coffee." It typically appears in powder form.

The Freeze-Drying Process

There's also a more expensive production method: the freeze-drying process. Don't be fooled by the recent popularity of freeze-dried coffee—this technology has actually been around for decades. The standard procedure still uses hot water to dissolve substances from coffee, but the concentration is much stronger than typical brewing—around 65% concentration extract. In fact, it doesn't look like coffee liquid at all, but rather like chocolate syrup.

Then these extracts are placed in a -5°C environment to condense until they become paste-like, after which they're transferred to a freezing chamber at -40 to -50°C. Once the coffee substances have hardened into blocks, they're broken into small particles of 2-3mm. This explains why freeze-dried coffee typically comes in small granules rather than powder.

The final step involves sending these particles into a vacuum drying chamber for heat drying. Under vacuum conditions, water sublimates rather than liquefies when heated. The resulting dried coffee particles become freeze-dried coffee.

Products like Nestlé's freeze-dried instant coffee powder and UCC's 114 and 117 are made using this process. The freeze-drying method costs more but better preserves coffee flavors, making these products more expensive as well.

The Evolution of Instant Coffee

At this point, we seem to have our answer. The reason instant coffee is often defined by coffee enthusiasts as being at the bottom of the "snobbery chain" is because its raw materials and production processes result in poor flavor. Long-standing stereotypes have also made it difficult to associate this term with good taste. Therefore, instant coffee disguised as "freeze-dried coffee" has broken out of this stigma.

Today's coffee market generally pursues flavor, and instant coffee must also evolve and upgrade. Previously, Robusta coffee beans were commonly used as raw materials, but now some manufacturers emphasize using 100% Arabica coffee beans. Freeze-drying technology has also improved—previously, freeze-drying required coffee liquid dissolved in hot water, but now cold brew freeze-drying technology exists, which better preserves coffee flavors.

In terms of appearance, 2-3mm granules are no longer the standard. Some freeze-dried coffees are ground into shiny powder crystals. Packaging has also evolved, with many brands introducing clever and interesting single-serving small cans. This undoubtedly helps the public disassociate this product from instant coffee, shedding the stigma of instant coffee.

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