Are there also fine instant coffees?

The reason why traditional instant coffee tastes bad is that the raw materials used to make coffee are of low quality. Some companies even add flavors and other ingredients to improve the taste of coffee. The reason why instant coffee manufacturers do this is nothing more than to make high profits.

There are always exceptions. One company guarantees that they use 100% traceable specialty coffee, which is coffee with a score of more than 85 points in the SCAA rating system. The company uses rapid cold drying technology, which is also one of the common methods for making instant coffee.

Kent Sheridan, the company's founder, said: "We pour the extracted coffee onto an ultra-low temperature metal plate and then use a vacuum to extract the water. The water will be gradually sucked out, and only the crystals of soluble coffee substances will remain on the metal plate." He said.

The company is called Voilà, and it is not a roasting company itself; instead, it works with many specialty coffee roasters in the United States and around the world. For example, they recently collaborated with St Ali and its founder Salvatore Malatesta from Melbourne to create Finca La Laja instant coffee produced from the James Fernandez plantation in El Tambo, Colombia, which covers an area of ​​only 5 hectares. This coffee has rich aromas of plum, brown sugar and flowers.

It is reported that the product is priced at US$16 per 25g (5g per bag), which is obviously much more expensive than ordinary instant coffee. But even so, the product was sold out in the first three days of sale.

This product is also St Ali’s first specialty instant coffee. “We are willing to try everything new,” said Malatesta. “It was a no-brainer to partner with Voilà.”

"This is actually part of molecular gastronomy," he said. "Many chefs around the world have been trying dehydration many years ago." Dehydration can make the flavor of ingredients more intense and extend their shelf life. As editors of the Broadsheet website, we decided to try it ourselves. We compared Voilà boutique instant coffee with other ordinary instant coffee brands. The result is very obvious. The taste of the coffee is close to hand-brewed coffee, but it also has certain defects.

“Aroma is one of the biggest issues we have right now,” Malatesta said.

At the same time, the taste of the coffee is more like instant coffee, lacking the mellowness of espresso or hand-brewed coffee. It seems that Voilà still has a long way to go if it wants to replicate the delicious taste of hand-brewed coffee.

But in terms of taste and appearance alone, this instant coffee definitely beats all other similar products.

“Regular instant coffee packaging doesn’t look appealing,” said Malatesta. “We tried to come up with a new packaging design to differentiate it from regular instant coffee products.”