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Is instant coffee real coffee?
Only the best goes into your cup of NESCAFÉ

Is instant coffee real coffee?

3 mins read

It’s 100% coffee, from bean to cup


Making instant coffee granules is not an easy process, and it requires a lot of machinery and other specialised equipment. Luckily, as science and technology have progressed, it’s gotten easier and faster – but one thing that has remained the same is that we always produce 100% pure, high quality coffee.

No extras, substitutes or additions

It doesn’t matter which one of our delicious NESCAFÉ coffees you enjoy – they all have the same base ingredient, and that’s pure coffee. The only other ingredient that gets used in the process of turning coffee beans into granules is water, but even that gets removed before the granules are packaged into the iconic NESCAFÉ jar, and make their way home to you.


Tip: How to reutilise your jar: NESCAFÉ jars are excellent containers for all sorts of dry goods like rice or pasta, are mostly airtight, and keep out moths and mites. You can paint or decorate your jars with chalkboard paint or anything else you feel like getting creative with. You canalso store utensils in your empty jars – spatulas and spoons.

No extras, substitutes or additions.

From coffee beans to coffee granules

After fresh green coffee beans are delivered to our factories, they are carefully sorted and roasted to absolute perfection. We mainly use two different types of coffee bean – Arabica, which produces sweeter, more delicate coffee, and Robusta, which makes a bolder, deeper coffee. These two beans need different roasting times, so we use carefully crafted methods to make sure they each get the heat and time they need to develop and bloom for that NESCAFÉ taste you love so much.

From coffee beans to coffee granules.

Adding only water – and then removing it again

Once they’re done roasting, the coffee beans are ground into powder. This is where water is added – the coffee is brewed with plain water, and then dried, leaving a coffee extract which is ground up into the granules you use to make your favourite NESCAFÉ coffee.


The most important thing here is that once we’ve added water, we remove as much of it as we possibly can. There are two main ways to dry the coffee extract – spray drying and freeze drying. Spray drying uses hot air to dry out the extract, while freeze drying uses a process called sublimation; freezing the water and then turning it straight into steam, leaving behind a dried coffee extract.


Fact: Any used coffee grounds that don’t make it into the final coffee extract are used as fuel in our factories, powering the machinery we use to make NESCAFÉ coffee granules. It’s all part of our mission to become 100% zero waste.

Adding only water – and then removing it again.
We’ve set our standard, and we’re sticking to it.

We’ve set our standard, and we’re sticking to it


We are supported by farms and partner farmers from regions across the planet. Whether it’s Honduras, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ecuador, or any one of the many other countries we work with, our standard is the same. Only the highest quality coffee beans, looked after by local partner farmers and communities. Nothing but water added from the moment it’s planted as a young coffee tree, to the moment it comes home with you as 100% pure instant coffee granules – with that NESCAFÉ flavour you know and trust.