Wow though I perfer ground fresh coffee I never knew instant koffie was patented in 1890 in Invercargill, New Zealand by a gentleman called David Strang.
Why isnt this family one of the richest in the world. What an amazing thing to come up with _b
(a) you cannot patent a result - the patent will be on the process (b) because there is more than one process possible with the same outcome (c) there were no insanely resourced international patent trolls in 1890 ready to buy the patent and defend it (d) all of the above
The other thing is instant coffee is just normal coffee in water, dehyrated back to a powder in big dryers. I presume there are heaps of different ways to do this. People often think that it isn't real coffee, but it is rehytrated coffee. ALthough I am sure there is still some that is sold around the world that isn't really coffee, just flavored coffee. They do still make it in NZ don't they?
This is one of the reason why companies keep recipes secret. KFCs secret recipe for example is a secret for a reason, so people don't make their own.
One of the problems with dehydrating coffee to produce instant coffee is that heat is usually applied, which accelerates the staling of the coffee. Some manufactures have got around this problem by using a process called freeze-drying which doesn't apply heat, but in my opinion, this tastes worse than heat-processed instant coffee.
DrCheese (food scientist )
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