Is instant coffee real coffee?

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.

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.

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.