How Is Freeze-Dried Coffee Made?

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Freezing the Coffee
- The freeze-drying process start with brewing regular coffee by passing hot water through an enormous column filled with ground coffee. The first "wash" contains most of the volatile oils and compounds that make coffee taste good. The resulting coffee is often concentrated before it is passed through a series of cooling chambers to freeze it. The frozen coffee is then broken up into uniform-sized pieces so that they will dry evenly when a vacuum is applied.
Removing the Water from Frozen Coffee
- The frozen coffee crystals are laid out on drying trays and loaded into a vacuum chamber. The vacuum induces a process called "sublimation." In sublimation, a liquid moves directly from a frozen state to a gaseous state without ever becoming liquid. The process is sped up by applying just enough heat to the frozen coffee crystals to start the melting process. However, because the vacuum keeps the atmospheric pressure low, water is unable to actually form. Instead, the water becomes a gas that is drawn out of the chamber by the vacuum. This process removes up to 99 percent of the moisture from the coffee crystals.
Packaging Freeze Dried Coffee
- Once the moisture is removed from the coffee crystals, they are gradually warmed to room temperature and packaged in airtight containers to keep out moisture and air.
Benefits of Freeze-Dried Coffee
- Freeze-dried coffee is generally regarded as the best tasting method of making instant coffee. The process of freeze-drying preserves more of the volatile oils that give coffee its flavor. In addition, many processors extract any remaining coffee oils from water that is removed from the frozen coffee and restore it to the coffee crystals at the end of the process.

Read a Fact Sheet on Freeze-Drying Foods.

Photo Credit Gastonmag@stock.xchang (http://www.sxc.hu/gastonmag)

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