The Crystalized Instant Coffee Episode

This beverage is quick and easy to make thanks to a long, complex history of technological innovations. Anney and Lauren brew up the science and history of instant coffee.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm more in Vogel Bomb, and
today we have an episode for you about instant coffee. Yeah,
it's it was an endeavor. Yeah, it's one of these
like technology heavy ones that's super fascinating but also kind
of a lot to untea s h. Yeah. Yes, and

(00:30):
this was a listener suggestion. Yes, thank you for the suggestions, Kelsey.
We appreciate it. Um and it Oh yeah, so so cool,
so cool. I get to talk about some of my
favorite stuff that is not bacteria or yeast poop. So okay,
that's exciting, that's exciting. I feel like I've talked about
this before on previous episodes, but I used to drink

(00:55):
so much instant coffee, um, when I was running in
the morning especially, I just needed that like quick caffeine thing.
And I really didn't care about the taste. It was
just like I need this, I'm gonna run. I feel like,
I know there's so much judgment about instant coffee, but
I'm somebody who really understands its place, Like oh no, absolutely,

(01:18):
I mean it's you know, like, hey, there are some
there are some quite good. Um, instant coffee options out
there now, um and be you know, it's inexpensive, it's
easy to make. Um, nothing wrong with it. Yeah. Yeah.
And one of the things that comes to me, I
have a lot of memories that come to mind when
I think of instant coffee. My mom would drink uh

(01:42):
this Folders instant like the Folders crystals. Yeah, And so
every time I like smell that her taste that I
think of her and when I go home, she doesn't
drink coffee that much, So that's what she gets from.
Although she did, and we're going to talk about this
in the history portion, she did start getting you that,
like via via Starbucks. Okay, it was fancy. She was

(02:08):
trying to be like real, a real good host real. Yeah. Yeah,
but it does like that taste kind of like burnt
coffee taste. Yeah, that sort of burnt almost like soy
kind of tasting. Like there's like a there's like a
savory note. And a lot of instant coffees that that
I find real interesting. I'm like, why what is this from?

(02:32):
But yeah, it's very particular, and it brings back a
lot of memories for me, especially like a lot of memories, good, bad, ugly, fine,
whatever it is, but one of the ones, like, for example,
I remember again with the running thing, like you want
that boost of caffeine before you run. Um. And the

(02:52):
first time I ran a race at Disney and it
was a half marathon, and I was like, really loopy
because it's so early, And I said, the conversation is
done when the coffee is cold, and when there are
three of us, we all like stared into our like
styrofoam cups of bitter instant coffee, sipped at them. And

(03:16):
it was like I said something so wise instead of
something completely ridiculous. I mean it was true though, like
probably the conversation was done when the coffee was cold.
It was done. It was silent. Yeah, but I have
a lot of like dragon pong memories associated with it,

(03:37):
you know, like just that sort of quick however, I
can get it coffee associated with events in particular. Sure, Yeah,
I will say. UM. I entered my coffee snobbery early
in life. I had in college, I like knew a

(03:58):
guy whose uncle hoasted his own coffee and so like
like from like from that early point in time, I
started really really appreciating um A a well roasted and
freshly brewed cup of coffee. And so so I never

(04:19):
really developed that that like instant coffee positive memory. And
so until some of the like better brands started coming out,
I was like, that's not coffee. Get it away from you.
What are even doing? I hate this, um like, call
it something else, don't call it coffee. I don't like
your face. Um Like, like I would like like the
level of like of like I need my specific kind

(04:40):
of caffeine and if I do not get it in
my specific way, I'm going to be very angry kind
of thing. Um. But uh, but no, no, no, these
these days, like yeah, there's usually I wind up going
to like the H Mart and finding one of the
Japanese or Korean brands and uh and buying those because
they're they're basically in distinct wishable from regular coffee and

(05:02):
they are so convenient. Yeah yeah they are, that's the thing. Um. Also,
I did use instant coffee for the dirt stains on
my last was two Ellie costume. Yeah yeah yeah, and
it totally worked. It looks great and also it smells

(05:23):
like coffee. It's right behind me and I can smell it,
like every time we do this every time we recorded here.
Oh yeah, no, that's totally right. The first time that
I bought instant coffee was definitely for uh, like costuming purposes,
for for for for special effects, for makeup, for like um,
fake blood. UM. Frequently in fake blood recipes, it calls

(05:43):
for a little bit of instant coffee to give it
like that that darker, rusty, browner tone, get it away
from the kind of like like candy apple red color
that you're going to get from a lot of food colorings. Yeah,
this is the savor promise. We'll always bring in some
kind of weird horror ella meant costuming thing in our

(06:04):
food episode. You can it's our guaranteed. Uh. You can
see the episode from our Hawaii mini series that we
did on coffee for more context. Yeah. Yeah. It included
a lot of great quotes from Sean Steimon PhD, a
k a. Doctor Coffee who uh in nineteen, like late

(06:27):
in twenty nineteen released an updated version of one of
his books, UM, a lovely update called The book is
called the Hawaii Coffee Book, and it's so cool. Definitely
check that out if you were interested in um kind
of the process of coffee and especially of coffees on Hawaii. Yes,

(06:47):
and he was. He was lovely to talk to you.
So the interview went on two hours. Yes, it really didn't.
We really didn't mean to, but we were just all
having such a good time. Yeah, it was. Uh and
I think we mentioned instant coffee in our M R.
E episode. That sounds right. Yeah, space foods like definitely

(07:10):
freeze dry, absolutely freeze drying. Yeah, well I suppose that
does indeed bring us to our question. Yes, instant coffee
what is well, instant coffee is a category of processed
coffee product that dissolves in water, producing a drink instantly. Um.

(07:33):
You don't need to like wait for it to steep
or toss away grounds or anything like that. Um. It
is quick and mess free and usually inexpensive. Um. It's
like a it's like bullion but coffee. It's like crystal
light but coffee. Um, it's like replicator coffee in that

(07:53):
like you're not entirely sure how it happened, and it
tastes almost but not quite entirely unlike coffee. It it'll
do in a pinch. Yeah, that was a Douglass Addams joke. Um, So,
like I said, some instance, really are really are quite
good these days, um, and we do know how they're made. Actually, Um.
There are a couple of basic types um, spray dried

(08:15):
and freeze dried, but both start the same way with
coffee beans. So uh, this is not an episode about coffee, no,
But beans are the seeds of the coffee plant. After
harvest and processing. To separate the seeds from the fruit,
the seeds are dried and then sent for further processing,

(08:37):
in this case roasting, probably a little bit lighter than
you would do for consumer use and in a nice
coarse grind. UM. Next, you're going to basically brew the coffee,
but like in the most intense way possible in order
to extract as much of the flavor as possible. So
you load your grounds into these columns that water can

(08:59):
pass through. A couple are cold cells where the water
is heated merely to boiling like a hundred degrees celsius
or two twelve fahrenheit UM, and a few more that
are hot cells with water heated to somewhere between a
hundred and forty two hundred and eighty celsius that's two
eighty four two three fifty six fahrenheit um. Some of

(09:20):
these are pressurized at higher pressures in order to help
the temperature situation. UM. Anyway, these uh, these columns, these
cells will extract the the cooler ones extract the flavor molecules,
and the hotter ones extract tougher stuff like carbohydrates, and
the resulting extract at the end of all of this

(09:42):
will be about coffee solids in water. UM. After that,
you concentrate this extract by removing some of that water
by either centrifuge or evaporation or freezing, which will result
in about at concentration of solids. All right, that concentrate

(10:02):
is cooled and clarified UM, and the oxygen is removed
from it to preserve those flavor compounds, because oxygen MUCKs
around with a whole bunch of different things in a
whole bunch of different ways to get it out of there. Also, UM,
during any of these prior steps, aroma compounds coming off
of the beans UM in the air, maybe collected and

(10:22):
concentrated for adding back in later after drying. I love this, Yeah,
so cool UM Okay, but that drying. Yes, in spray drying,
what you're looking at is this like big old heated
air tower some like seventy five or twenty five meters
tall UM, and it's filled in the vertical with um

(10:43):
with these air blowers UM that are blowing air heated
to around two and fifty celsius or four eighty fahrenheit.
It's heck and hot, and there's a nozzle at the
top of the tower that is uh A spraying this
coffee concentrate out in a mist that falls down through
the hot blown air. The water evaporates out of the concentrate.

(11:07):
The air is pulled out through a filter near the bottom,
and the dry powder of coffee collects at the base.
Often this powder will be further processed to um to
make the granules bigger and more like ground coffee. Like um,
you just tumble them with a little bit of steam
to sort of stick them together. Yeah. Um. But yeah,
so that's that's the process of of spray drying. And

(11:30):
that's a little bit less expensive and um less flavor
preserving than freeze than freeze drying. Yeah yeah, technical science
term for it. Yeah, definitely. But so in freeze drying, UM,
you're you're you're you're looking at um. Okay, First, freezing
the concentrate into a slush and then into a solid sheet,

(11:54):
and then breaking that sheet into into small pieces um granules,
then cryodesiccation. My god, you're gonna you're gonna keep them
cold and you're gonna get the water out. You're gonna

(12:14):
you're gonna dry them out. And the way you're going
to do that is you're going to sublimate the water
out of these icy granules. Um. You can. You can
see again our freeze drying episode for more on this,
but but basically, basically, freeze drying works by mucking around
with the natural process of things going from a solid

(12:36):
to a liquid to a gas. That's what we expect
them to do in you know, normal everyday Earth circumstances. Um,
if you have a solid thing, you expected to become
a liquid before it becomes a vapor. Yeah. Yeah, And
that's because again, under normal circumstances, solid and liquid and
vapor are energy states that correlate to how warm a

(13:00):
given substances. Um. The molecules and a frozen substance have
very little energy. If you add some energy, they'll loosen
up and start sloshing around, and when you add enough energy,
those molecules will break free of each other entirely and
become gaseous UM. That is the process of evaporation. In sublimation,

(13:22):
solid water crystals skip the liquid state and go straight
to being water vapor. In order for this to happen, UM,
the solid water molecules need to have enough energy to
escape as a vapor. But the circumstances have to be
wrong for a liquid to happen, like the stars are wrong.

(13:43):
Yeah uh enter not like ulu, but enter pressure because
at extremely low pressures, liquids can't cohere um. So so
adding energy to solid water are at extremely low pressure
can force it to go straight to a gas. UM.

(14:04):
And that's how you get the water out of this
this frozen coffee concentrate. You put these frozen granules in
a vacuum chamber, lower the pressure way way way down,
and then applied just enough heat energy to make the
water molecules sublimate. UM. Then you you sweep the water
out of there and your left with dry grains of coffee.

(14:26):
That's so cool, so cool, So I love it. Oh Man.
Also shout out to past Lauren who who pulled all
that information together. You go past Lauren, doing good, past

(14:47):
me alright, alright, so um so right. Uh. So, now
you've got either from the spray version or the freeze version. Um,
you've got these dry I particles of of a very
concentrated coffee. UM. Next those aroma compounds that might have
been collected are sprayed onto that dry coffee. UM. And

(15:10):
then then the coffee is packaged in moisture proof containers
and is ready to be sold. Um. And yeah at
that point, you know, like you you buy a jar
and to reconstitute it, you just measure them out and
add hot water and stir. It's shelf stable and portable
and doesn't require special equipment other than you know, like

(15:32):
hot water and a drinking receptacle. Um. It's also useful
in cooking and baking and yes, crafting. Uh you know
when you want to get a quick punch of coffee
flavor and or color without a lot of expense or mess.
Mm hmm. Yeah. I was very impressed with the swampy

(15:54):
that the instant coffee, right, very very impressive, very much
say fur than just rubbing your garment in dirt, which
you shouldn't do because of microorganisms. Yes, the Internet was
very firm about that, which I appreciated. Well, what about
the nutrition. Um, it's it's a lot like conventional coffee.

(16:18):
So yeah, like conventional coffee, instant coffee is by itself
low calorie. It's got like a wee tiny bit of
fats from the seeds, natural oils, especially in the freeze
dried versions. Um, it's got a lot of antioxidants. I
read during this research that coffee is the single largest
source of antioxidants in the modern human diet M And

(16:41):
if I had not been sitting down when I read that,
I would have needed to sit down because I was like,
that is impressive and also kind of sad, like we
all need to eat more vegetables, y'all, we all need
to eat more vegetables. Okay, yes, this is We've got
several shirt ideas that have come up in past episodes.

(17:03):
I feel like, eat more vegetables. You'll please eat more
vegetables is a shirt and yeah, yeah, it's pretty much
always accurate. Um hoofed. Anyway, instant coffee does contain caffeine
unless it is decaffe eated. Instant coffee and caffeine can
be sort of a mixed bag nutritionally speaking. Um uh.

(17:27):
Instant coffee has also been found to contain more acrylamide
than conventional coffee, which is potentially harmful, although not at
the levels that you're getting even from instant coffee, So
don't worry too much about it. Um, probably don't drink
more than like three to five cups a day of
any coffee. Yeah, I got I'm a two cup gal, Yeah,

(17:51):
two cups before noon and then that's it for me.
I'm allowed. I'm allowed to have a third in the
afternoon as long as it's before six pm. Okay, I
like we have these rules. Yeah, you gotta have a system. Well, right,
this is like, this is like hard tested. This has
been right. Ye, a lot of data has gone into

(18:12):
that into that conclusion anyway. And yes, the caffeine headache
is not to be trifled with. Oh goodness, see that's
the thing. Yes, well, we do have some numbers for you.
We do. Um. Instant coffee accounts for about fift of

(18:34):
the coffee that Americans drink today, um, including both home
preparations and vending machines. Because a lot of those those
instant coffee vending machines are instant coffee. Yeah, yeah, there
you go. According to a mashed article, I found se
coffee made in Australian New Zealand is instant So listeners

(18:59):
from Australian News Ellen right in is this accurate, I've
got to know, and that instant coffee accounts for thirty
of coffee brood around the world. Uh. Next Cafe made
up seventy of the instant coffee market as of twelve
and is available in over one eighty countries. Yeah. And

(19:21):
according to Nesslie's website, more than five thousand, five hundred
cups of their instant coffee are consumed every second, which
I'm guessing yeah, all right, Yeah, There's a lot of
people in the world and time zones are different things.
People like to drink coffee. I have a friend who

(19:43):
likes to drink it at night, so you know, all
kinds of things. You know, different people's brain chemistry is different. Yes. Truth.
During the first decade of the two thousand's, the rate
of growth in sales for instant coffee rose by seven
to ten year over year, and one of the biggest

(20:06):
areas of growth was in China. Um And I found
this interesting because a lot of articles about this quated
an off stated understanding that for a long time, the
average person in China drink two cups of coffee per year. Huh,
I have to a day. So this is like yeah,

(20:27):
well it is like like right, it is a traditionally
tea based, yes, caffeine consumption culture, so exactly. Um. So
if this this growth uh is true, which I believe
several publications have flicked into it. Um, that is a
huge shift from what's going on now when China is

(20:48):
the fourth largest consumer of ready to drink coffee. Surveys. Yeah,
they've done surveys on the population about this huge change,
and it seems to be all about convenience. Um, that's
just yeah, easy to make right. Yeah. You know, if
you if you don't own even the you know, relatively
simple equipment to easily make easily brew or drip coffee,

(21:13):
then mm hmm yeah instant coffee, instant coffee. But the
history was not instant. Yes, yes, all right, and we
are going to get into that history. But first we're
going to get into a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes,

(21:41):
thank you so again. You can see our episode that
we did on coffee for more context. Yes, but very briefly,
coffee was being cultivated by around eight in and around
what's now Ethiopia, and was being roasted and steeped in
water to produce the drink that we are familiar with.

(22:02):
By around twelve hundred CE in and around what's now Yemen,
UM public coffee houses as social spaces really flourished around
the Arabian Peninsula UM and beyond thanks to the Ottoman Empire.
Over the next few centuries, UM locals took steps to
monopolize the market, but sometime in the early sixteen hundreds,
someone smuggled fertile coffee beans out of the area, and

(22:25):
by the late sixteen hundreds the Dutch or running coffee
estates in Indonesia. The rest of the colonial powers got
their hands on it, and uh it became one of
the commodity crops that was integral to the slave trade. UM.
In that way, coffee houses spread throughout Europe and its
colonies throughout the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. Yes, which brings

(22:48):
us to the beginnings of instant coffee. Yes. Many historians
claim that the first instance of instant coffee occurred in
seventeen seventy one, when John Drain was granted a patent
for a quote coffee compound by Great Britain. At this point. Yes,
coffee had been present on the European continent for about

(23:09):
two centuries. A firm in Glasgow debuted product called camp
coffee in the eighteen hundreds. The ingredients included water, chickory sugar,
and coffee essence. Uh. Some version of camp coffee became
available at British grocery stores in the mid till late
nineteenth century. And as we've discussed in several episodes, coffee

(23:31):
and the energy it provided was majorly sought after during
the shortages of the Civil War. Like we talked about
this in our Oprah episode. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Like
it was a big deal and it has been a
big deal for soldiers in most conflicts in general. This
like boost of energy wherever you could find it. Um

(23:52):
With that in mind, one of the earliest known mentions
of instant coffee in the US comes out of the
Civil War, when an easily portable and light form of
caffeine was incredibly important. At the time, coffee making was
a bit of a hassle for the average person, requiring
roasting and grinding a whole thing. Inter someone whose name

(24:12):
is properly familiar to you. James Folder. Okay, yeah that folger. Yeah, yes,
that Folger. He and his sons started their coffee company
in San Francisco in the mid eighteen hundreds. They were
looking to capitalize on folks who are pouring in during
the San Francisco Gold Rush by creating a coffee that

(24:35):
was less of a pain to make. Um and they
became the first to sell canned ground coffee beans no
roasting or grinding required. This innovation helps them become one
of the most popular coffee brands in the country. Um
and they survived not only bankruptcy but the nineteen o
six earthquake that wiped out all other coffee roasters in

(24:58):
San Francisco. Uh huh uh. And it was right around
this point that a bunch of innovations were happening simultaneously. Right. So,
in eighteen ninety, David String out of New Zealand, applied
for a patent for soluble coffee powder that he dubbed
Strings Coffee. Um. That was not the only patent he

(25:20):
applied for. He applied for a couple of things, including
a coffee roasting apparatus of novel design and something called
Strings Eclipse Hot air grain dryer. All right, yeah, let
met it um. Something else people attribute to him is
the creation of mocha, which we're going to have to
investigate definitely. Yes, it's yes, Tokyo chemists story. Katso introduced

(25:43):
a powdered coffee product at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo,
New York in nineteen o one, and for a long
time this Kato's was considered the first stable powdered coffee
product until people dug up strings patents. UM. Kato Head
previously to eveloped a process for making instant t and
based its coffee powder on that one. Then in n

(26:06):
six a European immigrant named George Washington no relation owned
the process of getting coffee crystals from Brood Coffee. Yeah.
He was a British chemist and he was working in
Guatemala at the time. And uh, this this process Um
created the first like commercially viable instant coffee UM and

(26:27):
was called in the United States anyway red e coffee.
Ye like r E d capital e coffee. Yeah, I've
been too it, I like it all right. Um. Around
nineteen ten he started offering his instant coffee in the
US and the convenience factor made it a really big

(26:48):
hit during World War One. Yeah, it basically ran the
market in the US and tel around like nine. So.
One of the other most popular brands in the country
was Maxwell House Um, a company founded in nineteen twenty
by Joel Cheek that also offered a ground coffee being product.
While this wasn't quite instant coffee, it was a huge

(27:11):
stepping stone on the path to instant coffee. A few
other stepping stones along the way. Cyrus Blanc, Oh, that
was so French. I don't know if it's supposed to
be French. Cyrus Blank perhaps introduced coffee powder to retail
in nineteen o six. The story goes that he got
the idea at a diner called Tony Faust Cafe in St.

(27:33):
Louis after spilling a drop of coffee on a hot plate,
and this drop turned into a powder until it was
exposed to water, and then it became coffee again. The
story goes this discovery led to Faust Coffee, named after
the cafe, with Cyrus Blank being the leader behind that one.

(27:53):
In ninev Chimis Charles Trigg wrote in his notebook while
at Pittsburgh's Melon Institute fellowship Renude for one year. Main
work to be on soluble coffee. All attentions to be
centered there on new pressure absorption. Proves to be thoroughly
tried out. It's really cool. You can like look at
his journal entries. Yeah. Yeah, he conducted all kinds of

(28:16):
studies on coffee during his four year fellowship. There um
studies that proved useful to others in the field. So
he didn't really arrive at like instant coffee, but but
he was very integral for other people. He did go
on to become the chief chemist for King Coffee Products Corporation,
a company looking into water soluble coffee. In they introduced

(28:40):
minute coffee with ads reading like this, the housewife only
needs to pour hot water on the powder. The dissolving
process is instantaneous. No work, no bother, no grounds, no
utensils to scour. Yeah all right, oh wow, um, but
this brings us to a huge turning point in the

(29:01):
story of instant coffee. Okay, to set us up a little.
In the thirties, Brazil was inviting researchers to come help
them figure out ways to preserve excess coffee beans via
things like production of instant coffee, and one of the
companies involved is a familiar one. Yes in Nestle debuted

(29:25):
nest Cafe, a product that they made by spring liquid
coffee into heated towers along with an equal amount of
liquid carbohydrate. The resulting product was then rehydrated to make coffee.
Um Food chemist Max morgan Thaller spearheaded this initiative. He
had in fact been ordered to drop the whole thing

(29:45):
in due to coffee bean shortages and financial woes, but
Morgan Thaller just could not let this go. You can
let this idea go, so he experimented on it whenever
he could. In seven, he invited the higher set Nestlie
to try his creation, and they were majorly impressed. They
were like, yes, all right, let's go ahead. They decided.

(30:09):
The company decided that their test market would be Switzerland,
and cans of this brand of coffee were available in
Swiss grocery stores by nine seven, with the targeted audience
of single men since they needed a woman to make
them coffee. I guess that was sort of the implication
in the ads. It's like, you don't need her, this
is easy, pretty much, and the product was a hit,

(30:33):
especially amongst the men who did outdoorsy jobs or activities.
Dr Morgan Thaler got his patent in nineteen. By nineteen forty,
the product was available in thirty countries. World War to
you put a bit of a damper on sales except
in the UK and Switzerland, and the product was so

(30:54):
important to US soldiers that the government named it a
quote commodity vital to the war effort. One year that
America was in World War Two, the entire million cases
that the US Nest cafe plant produced all went to
the military. Wow yeah wow. On top of that, when
the Allied forces did their victory marches in Western Europe

(31:17):
and Japan, one of the objects and the care packages
that they were handing out was Nest cafe. Instant coffee
innovation continued over the next several decades and into today,
still ongoing. UM in the nineteen fifties and improved dehydration
technique allowed for larger particles of instant coffee, eliminating the

(31:37):
need for previously used carbohydrates to bulk up the product.
This research came out of Borden's Labs UM like the
Milk Company right Um, and it was pretty major in
six only about six percent of coffee consumed in the
States was instant by nineteen fifty four. It was like, wow,
m however, we've been talking about this a lot throughout.

(32:01):
This was a big deal. That aroma of coffee um
still alluded the researchers. It was still absent from the product.
So engineers were not done yet. They were trying to
find a way to fix this. Producers tried a couple
of things to remedy it um, starting with the idea
to add coffee bean oils to the instant coffee. When

(32:22):
consumers opened the jar or whatever it was in um,
they were rewarded with the smell of fresh coffee. However,
as soon as water and milk was added, the smell
went away. And on top of that, the oils were
a risk in terms of the product going brands it Yeah,
you don't want that. Along comes another huge innovation, the

(32:43):
invention of freeze dried coffee in nine four, a product
that preserved both the flavor and the smell of coffee
no oils required. Craft gets credited as in yes that craft.
They get credited as the first on the scene with
their ease dried Maxwell House offering in nineteen sixty three
or nineteen sixty four. UM. Freeze drying was a World

(33:06):
War two invention. Again, you can see that episode where
we went all into that. UM. Producers of instant coffee
also experimented with a method that used steam to cause
the coffee crystals to clump together to later be reheated
so that they more closely resembled ground coffee. UM, because
that was also a part of this was the aesthetic

(33:28):
did it look? However, a lot of flavor was lost
in the reheating process, and this technique was more about
appearance than flavor. Freeze dried coffee kept up appearances and taste,
so it was it was a vast improvement. Yeah, yeah,
and all the major companies introduced freeze dried versions UM.

(33:49):
And thanks to these innovations, instant coffee hit peak popularity
in the United States in the nineteen seventies. During that time,
about a third of the coffee that we imported was
made into instant coffee. Consumers were buying some two million
pounds every year because they Yeah, they were like they
were like, oh, yes, look at the superior flavor. But

(34:11):
if you're shouting at whatever device you're listening to this
through something along the lines of What Flavor and Ian Lauren,
What's Murder? You Are Not Alone? And in nine sales
of instant coffee sharply declined. Um. This was a direct
result of the increasing popularity of cafes and fresh food

(34:35):
coffees here in the United States. Companies like Maxwell House
made huge cutbacks. UM Nestlie tested out their gourmet instant
coffee called Tasters Choice in ninete, but it just couldn't
compete with America's changing taste? Was that were those early
commercials like how like Anthony Stewart, head of Giles from

(34:57):
Buffy Fame, got his start. I feel like they were
of like what Folgers? What was he in in in
the in the Tasters Choice commercials, I think my brain
is my brain. My brain is pigging me with something
along those lines. Okay, I'm googling now, Okay, this is
very important information. Um yeah, it is interesting as somebody

(35:20):
who has I grew up drinking instant coffee. I still
drink it, and I definitely get some shade when I
tell people that, and I understand, but I'm also again
a proponent that it has its place. It's plice. Yeah, absolutely,
it was. It was early early tony head acting chops tasters,

(35:41):
choice commercials. Yeah, that's so great. I'm gonna have to
look that up later. I'm so glad that I can't
remember my own phone number, but that's lodged in my
brains somewhere. That's really good. Yeah, that's that your brain
doing you. What favor is what that is? Um? But okay, still,
you gotta compete. And this kind of cracks me up
because in two thousand nine, Starbucks launched their own brand

(36:03):
of instant coffee, Villa or via v I A UM. Yes,
and I remember this because again, this is what my
mom gets me when I come home for special occasions.
It's very cute. Um. The marketing heavily featured it's so
called micro ground technology, and the then president CEO of
Starbucks claimed it would change the way people drink coffee. However,

(36:27):
it struggled to compete with freshly brewed coffee to um,
though it did do about one million dollars in global
sales in its first two years. But I find that
interesting because Starbucks was kind of the one of the
key players in the decline in ruining the instant coffee
and then it was suddenly like oh no, we make
it too yeah. Yeah interesting yeah, and then uh yeah

(36:53):
in um. At the at the top of the pandemic,
there was this trend of making at Algona coffee, named
after the South Korean candy um because it looks in
tastes similar. But yeah, it's made by whipping together equal
parts of water, sugar, and instant coffee to make a

(37:13):
foam and then using that foam to top hot or
cold milk. UM. Basically, what's happening here is that the
tiny particles of coffee solids and instant coffee can like
lock up and help form stable air bubbles in this
syrupy sugar water liquid um. Yeah, and the cheaper kinds
work better. The cheaper kinds of instant coffee work better

(37:35):
because they're usually spray dried and thus contain fewer oils
and thus foam up better because oil is a bubble breaker. Um.
As you may have witnessed, when you like are washing dishes,
my mind immediately goes to powerfuff girls broken. Um, I'm

(37:59):
in tregue by this. I I want to look more
into this. Yeah, delgana coffee um d A L G
O n A. It was. It was a big like
I think like TikTok trend um. Early, early in pandemic days,
people were like, I'm stuck at home. What am I
gonna do? I'm gonna make this fancy looking coffee drink.
I was thinking about that all the things I thought

(38:20):
I was gonna do during the pandemic at the beginning
actually happens. Yeah, it turns out I've mostly just been depressed.
That's weird. Oh goodness, I've read a lot of bad fiction.
Oh hey, that's great. Yes, And I think if like
I don't know if you've seen Rain of Fire, but

(38:43):
in Rain of Fire where they do that scene where
they reenact in par strikes back, that's me I can
Oh yeah, yeah, well that's a skill. Yeah that is.
That's one I've required during this But definitely I will
be Star Wars reenactor during the Apocalypse into it. Yeah. Yeah,

(39:05):
well that's enough to get you on my team. Yeah, yes, yes,
Instant coffee is big during the Apocalypse. It all comes together. Absolutely.
There you go. It is a big thing in like
video games and the Apocalypse. You want that instinct coffee. Heck,
oh heck, indeed. Wow. I think that's what we have

(39:26):
to say about instant coffee from now it is. We
do have some listener mail for you, but first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor.
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with I was gonna do the Folgers jingle.

(39:56):
Best part of waking it up folders in your cup,
because I think it's in they sold it. It's like
out in the dome. I think somebody might have bought it,
but it's not. There's anymore. I'm pretty sure. Um. But
then again, I don't know how to communicate these things
to you very well. I would have. I would have

(40:16):
figured it out by like the like a few notes in,
but I wouldn't have known where to place like the
like syllable breaks, so it could have gotten complicated pretty quickly. Yeah,
I agree. I agree. Well, we live and we learned.
At least we lived. A Albert wrote as a fellow

(40:40):
d m oozes can be a lot of fun to
run in reference to a comment we made about a
Black Pudding enemy in Dungeons and Dragons in our Black
Pudding episode um Albert continues in my recent post apocalyptic
sci fi fifth edition, Camp Pain, the players at sixth

(41:02):
level ran into a moded gelatinous cube in the subway tunnels,
as well as a sentient news named Gabbo that they befriended,
and my other fifth edition campaign. Using e N World
Publishing's level up rules set, the players at second level
ran into several gray uses. A black pudding would have

(41:24):
outright killed them, goodness, and black puddings are nothing to
mess with, and yet you did mess with him. Well
it was a modified version according to you. So we
were we were fine. Yes, I was like literally wow,

(41:48):
I can't describe how badly they were rolling everybody that
first session. I had like them trapped in this dungeon
and they could not get out, like they kept rolling
ones for everything. Right, Yeah, it was one of those.
It was one of those like first session things where
it was like wealth and then I guess I dropped
my dagger and I fall on it. I but this

(42:11):
is how they ran into the black pudding like rolled
fift in a row wild. But they survived and they
are You're right, You're right, Albert. They are very very
fun to run. They can like swallow you or your
items whole love it. Um, Kirsten wrote, I felt so

(42:33):
seen by Your Mango episode on so many levels. Growing
up in Cincinnati, I had very limited experience with mangoes.
I thought of them as a rare, exotic, and expensive
treat that my siblings and I sometimes got to eat
at my bappa's house. I remember the stringy fibers getting
stuck in my teeth, and Mom always said they tasted
like air fresheners. I wanted to like them, maybe in
theory more than in practice. Anyway, After graduating from college

(42:56):
in Cincinnati, I moved to Miami, Florida in the middle
of summer to find a steaming hot paradise with mangoes
littering the sidewalks and scenting the air after thunderstorms. Now,
mango season has become a bit of an obsession for
me in my Miami native husband. The idea Annie talked
about in the episode about not even knowing that you
haven't experienced the real version of something because you don't

(43:19):
have access to it is so true. We live in
a condo, so we don't have any fruit trees of
our own, but around this time of year, as they
start to bloom, I start scouting the mango trees on
our walking roots. In all the nearby neighborhoods. Once they're
ripe and falling off the trees, it's go time. We'll
go out for walks with backpacks and bring them home
full of six ten mangoes at a time. Of course,

(43:39):
we are respectful of people's property. Mango theft is no
joke in Miami. We only take fallen fruits that we
can reach from the sidewalk or roadside. I love a
rule set. This is great. Uh they continue. Every once
in a while, We'll see a tree in someone's yard
with dozens of rotting fruits on the ground, and I've
been known to knock on a stranger's front door to
ask permission to pick some, and I've never been turned down.

(44:02):
It's really cool getting to try mangoes from all these
different trees. They vary so much in color, size, texture,
and flavor. It's incredible. I don't know the names of
the varieties that we forage, but I definitely remember which
trees my favorite fruits come from. So cool Okay down
about a half hour south of Miami, in an agricultural
area called the Redlands, there are tons of tropical fruit

(44:23):
orchards and roadside produce stands with all kinds of mangoes
and other tropical fruits I'd never heard of before moving
down here. Done that way, there is a magical place
called the Fruit and Spice Park. They have over a
hundred varieties of mango trees, and if you go at
just the right time, you can eat yourself sick on
mangoes and learn the varietals by name. My favorite are

(44:43):
the ice cream mango and the fair Child mango. I've
been very curious to know how the listener maile improv works. Annie,
do you give any direction in advance? How do you
communicate your intentions to Lauren to interpret and join in.
I'm picturing a conductor like hand gestures. Would love a
peak behind the curtain on this. Oh, dear Lauren is

(45:06):
a champ. It's chaos wrapped and hope y'all, um, it
is absolute chaos. Yeah. So we're still to two years
into this pandemic. We're still doing this over skype um
and so we're like eating our homes, uh, dealing with
like a I don't know, maybe like second second and

(45:28):
a half delay, like maybe less maybe more um. And
so Annie like takes in that deep breath and um
starts and yeah. And there are big hand gestures, big
like conductor like hand gestures, uh that that relatively correlate

(45:50):
to like pitch and intent that I've kind of learned
learned to interpret um and and I just kind of
go I don't know, I just sort of go for it.
I'm sort of like, well, it's a trustful is one.
It is. I honestly like, I'm so impressed that you

(46:17):
even get like half my clothes by this time. And
I don't unless it's like a clear thing. I usually
make them up like the second before we do them. Yeah,
So yeah, that's wild to me. Sometimes I have a
vision Sometimes I have a vision round. Most of the

(46:38):
time it's like, oh gosh, I don't think this will work.
I don't think that. That's usually what happens is I
have to they won't try this easier thing because I
do realize, like, for this one, the best part of
waking up folders in your cup listener meal, different syllables
not gonna work. So I have to I have to
pick a um you've follow. Yeah, and I think the

(47:02):
real fun part for me comes in where um uh.
I think I mentioned this on the show before, but um,
you know the way that conference calls work is that
when um, when you start speaking, if you're if you're
at a certain volume level, um, the software will cut

(47:22):
out your audio feed of the other person. So so
I'm like trying to do it like enthusiastically, um uh,
but not loud enough that it cuts your mike because
if that happens, then I'm just guessing. I'm purely guessing

(47:49):
it's a skill. It's oh my, I'm not sure. I
don't know if I want to apply the word skill here. Um,
it's thing that happens bless twice a week. Yep. And
you know, we found a couple of great bloopers that

(48:09):
I wish one day we should Oh yes, where they've
it's gone horribly a way awry. It's very rare. We
don't release it. Usually we're just like, oh, yeah, that happened.
That's what happened. But it's usually me because sometimes I'll
accidentally say the ingredients instead of listener. Oh yeah. I
love those. They're very funny because I usually I don't

(48:32):
realize what I've done until you're like, hey, that was great,
but but yeah, but yeah, I know it's fun. I
love it. Thank you all for putting up with it. Yes, yes,
thank you, thank you very much. It was just something
we kind of did because we didn't have a jingle

(48:53):
and now here we are. Um. And also this sounds
amazing with the mangoes, goodness, mangoes, backpacks of mangoes. I
would oh, I would eat so many. I am also
so intrigued by this ice cream mango variety. Anyway, Yeah,

(49:14):
that's amazing. Oh no, no, thank you so much. That
sounds so cool. It does, it does, And thanks to
both of you for writing to us. If you would
like to write to us listeners, you can our emails
hello at saborpod dot com. We're also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.

(49:35):
Savor is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
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Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way.