How, and why, did instant coffee come to be? Quite simply, the world has instant coffee because, in the Depression years of the 1930’s, Brazil found itself with too much coffee and not enough demand. Americans on soup lines were in no position to help. And because Brazil’s economy was kept afloat on a sea of coffee, the Brazilian Coffee Institute approached Nestle, then largely a confectionery company and the inventor of among other things condensed and powdered chocolate milks, to see if they could find a way to process concentrated brewed coffee into a reconstituted powdered form.
The idea of a powdered coffee had been kicked around before. As early as 1901, a Japanese chemist, Satori Kato, had created a formula for instant coffee which required boiling highly concentrated liquid coffee until only a residue remained, and selling the residue as instant coffee.
The difficulty was that coffee brewed at any temperature above 205 degrees Fahrenheit will have all its flavors destroyed, and what Kato’s process produced was a bitter, burnt-smelling, un-coffee-like result.
Nestle, after eight years of attempts, finally settled on a way of dehydrating the concentrated coffee by shooting a very fine spray of it into a heated container, where it instantly condensed into powder form. The original formula had flavor-preserving additives of maltose, dextrose, and dextrin.
The result? In 1938, Nescafe, Nestlé’s choice of a name which combines Nestle with the Italian “caffe”, hit the markets in Switzerland, and when it succeeded there, was introduced in the U.S with a massive ad campaign aimed at the American housewife. The campaign was a triumph, and Nestle the candy/milk company became a major player in the world coffee market.
In the nearly seven decades since Nescafe first appeared, it has undergone several transformations, from 1955’s Blend 37 to decaf in 1986. And attempting to meet the fresh-brewed onslaught of the 1990’s were exotic-sounding versions Alta Rica, Cap Colombie, and Kenjara.
Brazil has long since exhausted its coffee surplus, and is actually predicting a shortfall in coffee production for 2007.
But instant coffee is here to stay.
