STiR coffee and tea magazine

40 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 5, 2017 (October / November) "We would like to make the world of great tasting, specialty coffee accessible for everyone," he said. At $3 per serving any- one can have a cup of quality coffee coffee with nothing more than hot water and a cup, he said. Compared to a typical soluble, Sudden sounds pricy, but Zloof explains that "specialty instant coffee costs about the same to produce as fresh specialty coffee. Specialty instant cof- fee is roasted and brewed into a liquid first, and then dehydrated into a powder. As a result, we need to put the same amount of effort and care into each cup as a café," he explains. "The quality of our flavor is determined by the quality of beans. We use the same specialty-grade beans as the cafés which can cost 3-4 times more than beans used for standard instant coffee," he said, adding that "our goal is to be the online version of Starbucks." Mexican decaf and instant coffee company Cafiver is betting the country's fast-growing domestic market will pay for quality. Cafiver commercial director Carlos Eduardo Lópes Romero says that soluble coffee makes up 80% of Mexico's domestic market. Average coffee consumption is 1.6 to 1.8 kilos per cap- ta. Cafiver produces an about 500,000 bags per per year in the company's decaf and instant facilities. "Nowadays we mix 60% robusta and 40% of arabica in our blends. We are working toward 50:50 in our blends," he says. "We want to be the biggest coffee company in Mexico with different products on Mexican grocery shelves all over the country." Solubles manufacturer and exporter Descamex (Descafeina- dores Mexicanos S.A.) created the Café Los Portales brand to meet growing demand for quality instant. "Diversification is really important for our businesses, but we will never lose our focus in coffee," explains Descamex gen- eral director, Luis Demetrio Arandia Muguira. "This is the new frontier of Ceylon tea," says Marasinghe. Visitors to the facility are sanitized, as in passing through a chamber that rids their clothing of dust and foreign particles. At the onset, the very essence of the tea is coaxed from leaves using a state-of-the-art Australian Flavourtech spinning cone column (SCC). The device extracts and recovers volatile compounds in 25 seconds through a gentle steam stripping process. A tea slurry enters the two-story-tall stainless steel chamber under vacuum. It flows as a thin film down the upper surface of the first stationary cone then drains through an outlet to the base of a vaned spinning cone immediately below. Centrifugal force forces the liquid to flow upward as the vapor rises, concentrating the flavor without chemical extraction. The relative proportion of volatiles in the aqueous aroma can be controlled. Hayleys sells the liquid concentrate and uses it to en- hance the flavor of its powdered teas while maintaining its natural characteristics. Cold steep process Jim Lamancusa, founder of Cusa Tea in Boulder, Colorado (www. cusatea.com) patented a process that also begins with a slurry, but in this instance the organic tea is combined with fruit. "We put them into room temperature water and pressurize the wa- ter to around 500 psi," Lamancusa explains. "This encourages the tea and fruit to steep at a water temperature that it normally wouldn't want to. We continuously test the tea and typically after around 8 hours, it has steeped to perfection." "We don't need to add any flavorings, aromas, or colors because the product is essentially steeped and complete. We then strain out the tea and fruit to prevent it from over-steeping. Once we have the tea liquid, we move it into a vacuum dehydrator that slowly removes the H2O from the tea over the course of 14 hours. This is the perfect process for dehydration because it avoids the high heat used in spray drying instant teas or the extreme cold used in freeze drying. Vacuum dehydration gently removes the water and reduces the tea to a fine powder or crystals, he said. "The tea is so starved for moisture that it instantly rehydrates when mixed into water," he says. Instant opportunity Tea drinkers accustomed to varying temperature, steep time, and leaf quantity have no control when it comes to instant. Manufacturers that begin with high-quality tea, perfect the extrac- tion, retain the aroma and package the tea to prevent staling will be rewarded for their efforts – especially by young tea drinkers who see convenience as paramount. Soluble coffee recently experienced its breakthrough. The global market for instant coffee is growing at 4.8% per year and is expected to reach $42.5 billion by 2025, according to Transparency Market Research. Sales across the seg- ment are up after slumping for decades thanks to innovative products like Starbucks VIA. The combination of micro-ground roast coffee and soluble coffee generates praise and profits. Sales topped $100 million in the first 10 months following its in- troduction in 2010 later rising to $1 billion. Tea is poised to do the same. Arizona tea tops sales Descamex in Cordoba Mexico is a pioneer in natural decaf

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