Submitted 1 year ago by someguy3@lemmy.ca to [deleted]
For some reason I think of it as an older concept. Now Starbucks and coffee chains are popular.
Starbucks tried to modernize it with these little packets a few years back, under the name “Via”. The older brands still exist too, such as Nescafé, which, as a Nestle product, I assume is made from the blood of indigenous people.
The production actually is pretty cool really. They basically brew giant vats of coffee and then freeze dry it into a powder that can be easily rehydrated.
That actually made me like insta coffee a tiny bit more for just being so cool
i bet the blood of indigenous people would taste better... not that im condoning such an aberration.
Nestle employees taking notes furiously
When you drink the coffee, you can really taste the iron deficiency.
The biggest difference is that starbucks via doesn’t start with awful coffee.
Starbucks isn’t good coffee compared to some fancy pants third wave coffee, but It’s not nescafe either.
Via was godly for festival mornings.
I just bought a couple dozen of these NUUN tablet tubes. When it arrived the return address had Nestle on it. So I guess I can’t buy those anymore…
I imagine there are tons of office workers, mechanics, construction workers, etc. who are drinking instant because it’s impractical or impossible to have a coffee machine at work or in the field. I believe the vast majority of coffee vending machines also use instant coffee behind the scenes, so everyone who’s ever gotten a cup of highway rest stop coffee was most likely drinking instant at least once. Ditto with the “cappuccino” machines at every convenience store and gas station on earth.
I carry instant coffee with me when I’m camping, because I can’t be bothered to have to carry and more importantly clean any kind of coffee gadget.
Look into an Aeropress.
It’d work comfortably in camping or office situations. Not as easy as instant coffee but much, much better.
I’ve seen 'em and I’ve used them in the past. They’re a fine solution, but they still require cleaning and a couple of satchels of Taster’s Choice or whatever is easier on the KP and also much smaller than a giant coffee syringe. Showing up at the pay-for-pitch in the station wagon is one thing, but usually all my stuff needs to either fit in my panniers or my backback.
There are guys I’ve hiked with who have them, though. To each their own.
Vacuum insulated hot drink containers are a thing, and work very well. That’s what field workers use. Who has time or a device to boil water?
Every coffee vending machine I have ever used ground the coffee while you wait. Cappuccino machines are definitely a mix, though.
I just brew in my French press after dinner, pour some into a thermos after it’s done, and store the rest in my French press in my fridge. The next day, I pour more into my thermos. I feel even old coffee tastes better than instant, but I understand that’s my opinion.
It’s all I drink. But I only drink coffee for the caffeine, it all tastes like shit. If I want to enjoy it I have a cup of tea.
You do you I guess but… surely a good cup of proper coffee tastes less-shit and has more caffeine?
Put a little salt in it! It helps a lot especially with the cheaper brands.
The link literally has “joke” in it so I’m not sure if I should be taking this seriously.
I drink both instant and real.
I drink french-press rocket fuel in the morning, a strong cap at lunchtime on office days, and I wouldn’t compromise on either.
But afternoons at home, or in the evening… I dunno, it’s just too much drama. I want something in the background that isn’t going to make any demands on my attention. It’s the equivalent of watching garbage TV at the end of a long day. You don’t want hard-hitting incisive social commentary, you just want a couple episodes of Ow, My Balls.
I’ve found a brand that doesn’t taste like toner; it’s not real coffee, just Brown Drink. But it’s entirely acceptable Brown Drink, and it does what I need it for.
What brand is it?
huckleberryroasters.com/…/huck-instant-blue-orchi…
That is legitimately good instant coffee. Given the price, I’d hope so. I take that camping.
Same. French press for work, instant for home where I don’t know how long I can keep a given activity going.
I do. Almost always. And there are three main reasons for it.
(A) Hassle free prep. Hot water and stirrer, bam!
(B) No waste/by-products (e.g. filter, brewed coffee granules residue, blah blah) - so much less carbon footprint.
© A cup of instant coffee has slightly less caffeine content than the same cup of freshly brewed coffee. Good for me, because I have been a caffeine-addict, and trying to cut down now.
So I always try to go for Freeze-dried instant coffee ( especially Colombian, like Juan Valdez ), and not the Spray-dried shit.
so much less carbon footprint.
Based on the functional unit of 1 tonne of coffee produced, instant coffee has higher impacts and costs than ground coffee for both system boundaries because it requires double the amount of green coffee beans and 7–11 times more energy.
Really bad news, and so ignorant of me. Thanks for the enlightenment btw !
There is waste and byproduct, just not in your kitchen. Look into the manufacturing process. There are still beans that are roasted, ground, brewed and discarded.
(B) No waste/by-products (e.g. filter, brewed coffee granules residue, blah blah) - so much less carbon footprint.
Not sure how you come to this conclusion. The waste is the same (if not more), just ends up somewhere else. Also, you’re adding a whole extra process (freeze drying) requiring extra energy, and water needs to be boiled twice (during brewing and at home).
I love coffee. I am a coffee snob. Instant coffee is easy to pack and travel with. If you have access to hot water it’s still coffee which is better than nothing. If you don’t have access to hot water then it’s a tastier caffeine pill.
When camping, never otherwise.
It’s a bit more common in the UK. Everybody’s got 230v electric kettles practically in every room (/s) so having coffee that just takes hot water has extra appeal. I’m also lead to believe that their instant coffee is a bit better quality than what is common in the US.
this is so odd for me to read. instant coffee is treated like literal dirt over here. so the idea theres a good kind of drinkable dirt sounds hilarious.
90% of what I “know” about England is from panel shows. It’s a small and warped window.
UK here, and yeah, this is my experience.
I’ll drink instant most days (right now in fact) and proper coffee when we have guests or if I’m not pushed for time.
Quality of instant varies wildly, but there’s at least a few versions that are very decent indeed IMO.
For me instant coffee is for backpacking, because when you’re busting your ass on the trail for a few days literally anything you can eat or drink tastes amazing
One of the best feelings in the world is a morning hike up the mountains, reaching a stopping soot and boiling some hot water for some tea/coffee.
Absolutely!
It’s portable, stores well, takes nothing more than a mug and hot water to make, and takes no longer to make than it does to heat the water.
Sure, I prefer good drip coffee or an espresso-based drink, but I travel a lot and often hotel room coffee sucks. Sometimes a decent insta-coffee works great to get you out the door.
I do. What’s the problem with it?
It’s too fast! Where you goin at that speed?
I was recently on holiday where most of the other guests in our hotel were 50-70 year old Germans.
The breakfast buffet at our hotel had a large scale coffee maker which could do some surprisingly good freshly ground coffee. What it could also do is spit instant coffee into your mug and pour hot water on top.
In two weeks I never saw someone draw something other than fucking instant coffee from that thing.
But why??
If only I knew…
Absolutely. Quality instant coffee tastes as good as a regular brew, when prepared correctly: dissolve in cold water, ONLY THEN add hot water.
Are those the actual directions or what you’ve found?
I used to avoid instant coffee until I read this somewhere and tried it. It definitely changed my coffee game. The rationale behind it is that aromatics evaporate too quickly when the instant powder is infused with too/boiling hot water.
Ducks, now I have to try…
Yeah, I have low standards
I still do. Most of my coffee consumption is instant, but I am not particular about coffee so long it doesn’t taste bad.
Instant coffee is still popular and common in Asia. Coffee vending machines, which are technically instant, are also common in waiting areas of businesses (i.e. dealership, leasing offices, clinics, etc.)
In the UK it’s still very common for people to have instant coffee at home. Companies will sometimes have their own fancy coffee maker (e.g. Nespresso) but not always.
Unless you work in tech, then the offices have £5k Italian espresso machines that only five people know how to operate.
Have solely or in addition to ground coffee?
Solely.
It’s kinda like asking “why don’t more Americans own electric kettles?”.
UK: Kettle for tea. US: Coffee maker for coffee.
We generally drink more tea than coffee and so kettles became the norm. Some people do own their own coffee makers or cafetieres but it’s less common. One is a nation coffee-drinkers and the other tea drinkers. Each has settled into using different machines and therefore different products.
Revenue in the Instant Coffee market amounts to US$30.3bn in 2023. The market is expected to grow annually by 5.03% (CAGR 2023-2028).
In global comparison, most revenue is generated in Japan (US$4,741m in 2023).
In relation to total population figures, per person revenues of US$3.95 are generated in 2023.
In the Instant Coffee market, volume is expected to amount to 1.6bn kg by 2028. The market for Instant Coffee market is expected to show a volume growth of 3.5% in 2024.
The average volume per person in the Instant Coffee market is expected to amount to 0.19kg in 2023.
Yes. When I can’t be arsed to grind beans and boil water. Doesn’t taste as good, but it’s fine with a little cookie or something.
Same. Instant in the morning and a normal one with grounding beans in the afternoon.
I used to because I am single and it didn’t seem economical to brew a pot for one cup. Then I found out about the “4 cup” machines like the ones they put in hotel rooms.
Mr Coffee single cup machine, makes hot or iced, 1 cup at a time, its awesome! no more stupid pods
I grind enough for a big cup, pour water in it, and decant it to another cup using a fork as a filter. Seems to work fine.
Starbucks and coffee chains are, you know, nowhere near my house, for one thing. How am I going to have coffee in the morning if I have to first leave my house and get a bus to where the coffee shop is, then get the bus home again and then go to work, or whatever?
Further, those places are EXPENSIVE AS HECC. The sort of people that can afford to buy coffee at those places every day sure do have it real nice.
For the rest of us, we make our coffee at home, and sometimes if we’re lucky we get the cheap “real” grounds instead of the instant powder, haha
In college, I used to drink Starbucks’ Via. That instant coffee hits different.
Nowadays, I make either an espresso or a pour over. But I still crave Vias sometimes.
Not me, but it’s great for baking (a bit of coffee makes chocolate taste more chocolatey) and making nutrition shakes palatable.
At night when the espresso machine is too loud
I did the same for a long time. Now I find the histamine bomb from instant coffee just makes me feel terrible so I grind coffee with a hand mill and use an aeropress if I’m making a cup in the middle of the night.
histamine bomb
Is this a you thing or have I not been drinking coffee long enough? Is there a science behind it but I don’t understand? I just googled and found a bunch of stuff about coffee having histamine but most of the sites are less than authoritative. The NCBI article I found (I only skimmed a little) seemed non coffee specific but interesting. Gonna save to read later.
I like it just fine. Used to drink it all the time at my old job. My current job actually has coffee in the break room as a perk, so now I drink that. It’s still basic Folgers or whatever, but it’s fine. Not every coffee needs to be fancy. Sometimes I just want a cup of joe.
I only use it to make Galdona coffee. Basically a tablespoon of crystals, tablespoon of sugar, tablespoon of boiling water. Whip it until its a really thick foam, almost like shaving cream, then you put it over some milk, ideally also lightly sweetened as the foam ends up really bitter without a shitton of sugar which I don’t prefer to use.
Isn’t that basically what a Keurig pod is?
Does everyone have a Starbucks in their home? Is everyone on large incomes?
The answer to both is no and no. Buying coffee is expensive and retail is at least a long way away for nearly all people. Instant is instant and cheap it will always have a place.
beckerist@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Anyone that uses a Keurig is basically drinking instant coffee
Number1SummerJam@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I get the worst nausea whenever I drink something from a k cup machine. Nobody ever cleans their machine and the ingredients are questionable.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yum, hot infected plastic
someguy3@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Ha, true.
can@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
It still brews hot water through coffee grinds unlike instant which is mixed in and dissolved.
volvoxvsmarla@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Instant coffee is actually freeze dried and yes should dissolve completely, while grinds will never just disappear in the water.
But then there’s that.
A couple of weeks ago we went abroad and asked a friend of mine to watch our apartment because I had flowers that needed pollinating. In exchange he could stay at the apartment. Since he’s a Ukrainian refugee who has to share a room with a questionable dude he gladly took me up on that offer.
Now, we are coffee snobs, my husband’s youtube history is full of James Hoffmann. So we have a manual espresso press at home, a hand filter, a french press, two moka pots, and a senseo pad machine (for guests; our filter machine just broke).
When we came home, we found a can of instant coffee. Jacobs, to be precise, and everything in Ukrainian. Dude brought his instant coffee to our coffee infested place. Knowing that he has been here for a while and drinks a lot of coffee, I asked him how did this can last him so long. He got it imported. He freaking imported Ukrainian Jacobs instant coffee into Germany.
And then we start reading the can’s text a bit more profoundly. It is a mix of normal instant coffee, i.e. freeze dried, with a bit of finely ground coffee mixed in. It does not dissolve completely. It takes ages for the grind to settle to the bottom. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea. I don’t know what the purpose is supposed to be. But they advertise it heavily on the package.
Also, I tried a cup and it does taste like shit but to each their own.
Tldr: instant coffee usually is freeze dried coffee that will dissolve completely but there are some unholy products designed by questionable people that contain real grind coffee for no reason.
DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Can you elaborate ?
It’s supposed to be pressurised hot water through grinds, like espresso.
whynotzoidberg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nespresso machines are definitely pressurized and temp controlled. Keurig, less so.
I read something somewhere once (great source, right?) regarding Keurig temps, and they weren’t consistent or optimal. And the pressure is more like a hose with an attachment as opposed to a pressure washer.
Some K cups will empty out when you use them, too. From what I’ve run into, that’s typically the fancy flavor ones. But some are just coffee grounds that get a suboptimal water flow at suboptimal temps going through them.
Someone can correct me on what I’m remembering though.