Sublimated coffee - is it natural coffee or not?

In a time when time is equivalent to money, one has to sacrifice much to save it. For example, unsurpassed taste of natural coffee.

Yes, to feel this taste, you need to try hard. Collect, clean and dry coffee beans. Correctly to fry them, to grind, to weld. A whole ritual, which has a lot of subtleties and tricks.

What is there to say, even if you buy already collected, roasted and ground coffee in the store, often still does not have enough time to cook it. And sometimes special knowledge.

We have to be content with instant coffee, which, although it succumbs to taste and aroma, is prepared in less than a minute and in any conditions. But since we have to compromise, we will choose the best of alternative proposals. So is it true that freeze-dried coffee is Anyway, what's natural?

First, we'll figure out what types of instant coffee.

• Powdered. Do it this way: for a certain time, the grains are treated with a hot water jet. Then the resulting infusion is filtered and sprayed in special chambers filled with hot gas. Drops of coffee liquid are curled, dried, and a powder is produced.

• Granulated. It is made by the same principle, but the powder is struck with hot steam, as a result of which granules are formed.

• And, finally, natural sublimated coffee, which we will discuss later.

Sublimated coffee is instant coffee, produced by the technology of dry freezing. The fried grains are crushed and boiled for three hours in special sealed containers. In this case, the steam does not fly away into the air, but in a special way it is removed with the help of pipes. It is needed to extract the aromatic substances that are contained in the essential oils of coffee beans.

Further, the cooked coffee mass is frozen using fast freezing technologies and then dewatered by vacuum under low pressure conditions. It turns out a fairly dense briquette. It is crushed and the same irregular pyramid crystals are obtained.

However, these crystals do not have aroma, and what coffee without aroma! Here the manufacturer can go in two ways: to use the essential oils collected from the steam or artificial flavors. Needless to say, the second option is much cheaper, but the quality is appropriate.

As you can see, this technology is much more complicated and more energy-intensive. Therefore, soluble freeze-dried coffee is quite expensive compared to granular and, moreover, powder.

Although this type of instant coffee is the best, the quality of coffee produced by different companies varies. The reason may be in poor-quality raw materials, violation of technology, use of fragrances, etc. The question arises: "Which sublimated coffee is better?" Until you try and choose your own, you will not get an answer to this question, as there is no dispute about tastes. But buying a substandard product can be avoided if you take into account some factors.

1. If the package is transparent, inspect the pellets. They should be large enough and have a light brown color. At the bottom of the jar there should be no powder, since its presence indicates that the technology was broken in the production process.
2. The material from which the packaging is made is not important for the preservation of soluble coffee. The main thing that it was airtight. No cracks on transparent packaging, rust on metal, etc.
3. The composition should include coffee and only it. Chicory, barley, "identical to natural" ingredients and other additives there is not the place, unless you buy deliberately coffee with certain properties.
4. Compare the dates of manufacture and packaging. The difference in them is smaller - the better. Moreover, the total shelf life should not be more than two years.

So, freeze-dried coffee is a soluble coffee, prepared according to a special technology, which allows to preserve the maximum possible for such a "coffee form" flavor and aromatic qualities. If you do not have Turks and coffee beans at hand, but only a jar of instant coffee, then let it be sublimated.