Okay, so, no one tell my PhD supervisor, but I've experimented with making instant coffee using our lab's freeze dryer. I had access to a pretty nice super automatic espresso machine in the building, so I brewed into a pre-chilled container, and then flash-froze the coffee in liquid nitrogen. From brew to solid ice in less than a minute. This then went onto the freeze dryer overnight, and it was done by the next day. It tasted quite good, but I agree with James, there is something lost in the process that I can't quite explain. Fun experiment, but definitely super inefficient.
I'm guessing that you lose quite a bit of the tasty volatile aromatics in the freeze drying process despite all efforts to preserve them by freezing the liquid as fast as possible. It's not just water boiling off at those low pressures.
Ben from Hasty Coffee in Canada here - Seems like specialty instant is trending on TH-cam this week! We've been scaling freeze-dried for 4 years for us and over 40 coffee roasters and it is very difficult on a small scale. If you have 2-300k to dump into equipment you could produce an economically viable specialty instant on a small-medium scale. We've had to get creative and do some very risky in-house engineering and waste a ton of cash on blowing stuff up. It's been a wild ride but we've created a fantastic instant process now and I can't imagine a world without it. Always happy to forward some samples for comparison!
The amount of coffee nerds happily exchanging thoughts in the comments is the whole reason for internet existing. You guys are awesome and Canada is my favourite American country.
Do you freeze it first? I always thought the benefit of a freeze dryer was how fast it freezes. If you leave coffee to sit to come to room temp, the exposure to air gives it a lousy taste. So if you do that first, aren’t you just gonna end up concentrating that flavor?
@@hopegold883 If you have an industrial freeze dryer you could freeze it in the machine. Harvest Rights like in the video on the other hand are pretty much useless for coffee production. If you freeze in the machine you’re on track for a big mess.
And utterly wonderful - I have got to get some. Who knows James may as much a metal head as any of us - I can well imagine him in the mosh pit. Or maybe just chilling back to some old skool AC/DC or Metallica. What sort of metal does the Hoffman listen to? To be honest I would think he's into progressive metal like Animals as Leaders as Tosin really shreds
I'm loving that this video has activated all the chemistry nerds who are secretly using their insanely expensive specialist work lab equipment for making illicit homebrew instant coffee, and then nerding some more about the exact process. Nerd love
@@o2xbI think you are under the impression that the word is only used as a pejorative. This is the Oxford English Dictionary definition informal noun noun: nerd; plural noun: nerds 1. a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest. "the executive is an unabashed film nerd"
Instant Dan from B&W Coffee Roasters here. Thanks for shouting out our vid! The bit about freezing time was fascinating; we don't worry about it too much, but that's mostly a logistical thing. Would be interested to see if different modes of extraction yield different profiles for you to test your espresso theory. We found that a blend of espresso and filter actually produces a better instant than either alone. Would be happy to send along some samples if you want to test some of your experiments side-by-side!
Hi Dan, Lorenzo from Loric Coffee here. Your BTS vid was one of our faves as you share many of our approaches. On freezing time, we found it absolutely makes a big difference in FD time, which then impacts final flavor. The reason for this (and there's whitepapers on this) is that getting the right crystalline structure in the frozen product affects FDing results. I'd be happy to send some product samples to you or James too!
Hi Dan and Lorenzo, BadDoge from "The Internet" here. I have some samples of brown crystals I could send both of you, no guarantee it's instant coffee though.
Hey Dan - Ben from Hasty Coffee in Canada here. I'd love to exchange some samples if you're interested. I haven't tried your instant before. We use a home-made extraction system but it would be interesting to compare profiles.
I work in a research lab (some weird field called 'proteomics'), where we try to understand proteins using ridiculously expensive and complicated instruments ('mass spectrometers'). Sample preparation involves chopping up our proteins into 'peptides' using an enzyme (trypsin) and 'drying' the peptide-containing solution in a little vacuum centrifuge/vacuum concentrator (so called Speecvac), which makes our samples more suitable for storage. One trick we use to speed up the drying process is to first 'snap-freeze' our sample in liquid nitrogen before we place the frozen peptide-containing sample into the Speedvac for drying. You could kind of steal that idea to potentially improve your instant coffee: Idea 1): Directly extract your coffee into liquid nitrogen (or into a container placed in liquid nitrogen) and then transferring your 'snap-frozen' coffee into the freeze-dryer (you may want to add a bit of liquid nitrogen into the drying tray to prevent the coffee from thawing again). Idea 2): get some dry ice and extract your coffee directly into your dry ice. This will probably form some sort of frozen coffee crystal/dry ice mixture, which you could then spread out on your freeze-drying tray (without your coffee starting to thaw again) to start the drying process. The dry ice should just sublimate (released as CO2) during the drying process. The dry ice approach could be a bit messy, though (you may want to wear a lab coat and some protective glasses)... These approaches may address three problems: 1) Freezing your coffee much more quickly (which, as you mentioned, is essential to get tasty coffee); 2) Preventing your coffee from thawing while you distribute your coffee onto the tray of the freeze-drying machine, as I my gut feeling tells me that repetitive freeze-thawing may not really promote your coffee taste; 3) Speeding up your drying process, which may also help you create better tasting coffee. The cold temperatures and the fact that you have a lot of gas (CO2 or N2) surrounding your coffee may also reduce the amount of oxidation, and thus, preserve taste (although that's really just a naïve hypothesis...). Anyhow, would be interesting to see you play around with coffee and dry ice/liquid N2🥶😅. Really enjoy your channel, keep up the good work!
Hah, you had the same idea as me. Basically liquid nitrogen ice cream. Dry ice is probably a no-go though because CO2 and water react to make acid, which will result in a bitter coffee. Nitrogen is pretty chemically stable and shouldn't really have any impact on the flavor.
Not a hack, but a little bit of science. I know the natural impurities of your water are important to the taste of your coffee. If you brew a cup of coffee with water that you like to drink and then freeze dry it, it will have all the impurities your water had. Then, if you reconstitute it with the exact same amount of the water you like to drink, the resultant cup will have double the number of salts/other impurities as the fresh cup. Some ways around this might be: a) to brew an extremely concentrated batch of coffee with water you like to drink and then reconstitute it at a more normal concentration for drinking. b) to brew your coffee with distilled water and reconstitute it with water you like to drink. c) to brew your coffee with water you like to drink and reconstitute it with distilled water. The problem with option c is that if you're in a situation where you are using instant coffee you probably don't have distilled water to hand. I'm not really tempted to use instant coffee as I just make some, even if I'm camping or traveling. I have a tiny french press and a little rocket stove that fits in my bag easily. Mostly I see uses for instant coffee in baking and there, maybe it's not necessary to get The Best cup of instant. Anyway, for the sake of science it might be fun to compare those three options I presented.
@@jameshoffmann I think you might be underestimating your viewership's tolerance/hunger for such detail. Maybe create a second channel with the bits that don't make it into the more polished main content? 😊
@@jameshoffmann Would it not have been better - purely for the best cup of instant question - to have brewed with that water you think is best for brewing coffee (since the salts/metals are important for extraction) and then make your coffee using the freeze-dried coffee but with distilled water, which is just because you don't want double the salts/metals? Oh also, it would be very cool to potentially use liquid nitrogen to speed up the freezing process.
The "slurp-free" track is a kind of wonderful example of how much you and your team care about the quality of your videos. I don't personally mind the slurping but it says a lot that you're willing to put in a little more effort to make your videos better in that small way.
Ditto. Absolutely! There simply are no words to describe how brilliantly and delightfully entertaining he is. BTW, this means I don't have to second guess my decision to pass on the purchase of a freeze dryer. They are ridiculously expensive.
"Indispensable for invalids and weak persons- You can't say that!" Edit: lest I anger the God of citations and plagiarism, Hbomberguy, "Woke Brands" video
He likes to paint himself all over in it. It's like baby oil to him. That's what he does. Him and his lorry driver friends all bovrilled up and then they slip about, that's what they do. Good times indeed. Must be a James thing.
Thanks for this video, James. I broke a $700 lens today at work. ( I work in video.) and I just needed to unwind and think about something else. I love coffee. I use your V60 method every morning with my daughter. And your work always transports me to a better place. Thanks for that.
Wow, my mom bought one of these freeze drying units a few years ago and started freeze drying everything she could think of and ended up making some really interesting fun snacks or stored ingredients. And James Hoffman is using it! This is the first time I have ever had some real-life experience with one of the crazy fancy appliances he buys for a project!! And very possibly the last time…
The rubberiness may be at least partially coming from the tray bay in the Harvest Right. The silicone and glue in the bay can take a few batches to "burn off" on brand new Harvest Right machines. You also want to make sure that there's not too much oil in the pump as that can cause the oil to get into the food. Great episode btw! I'm going to have to try this asap!
Agreed, those silicone ice moulds should probably be dishwashered a few times if they were new. Putting warm liquids in probably wouldn’t help with the rubberiness!
I have had a coffee on my mind for a while now and this feels like a good time to bring it up. A few years back, I was visiting Peru with my (now) wife. We decided to take a trip out to the Manu forest from Cuzco. On our drive we made various stops at little family-owned cafes, on the one road heading out to the Amazon rain forest. I noticed a staple on every Peruvian dining table in the mornings, it looked to be a coffee concentrate in a glass cruet bottle with a cork in the top. The locals would just add a bit of this with hot water from the kettle to make, in short, instant coffee. It was strong stuff. And the concentrate apparently keeps for days at a time. I haven't found much information online about this, but I would love to learn more about it. If anyone can shed some light on Peruvian coffee culture, I would greatly appreciate it. I always enjoy your videos James. Thank you, and your team, for all you hard work.
Hi there! Not from Peru but what you described sounds exactly like coffee essence (esencia de café) that we have in Ecuador, down to the description of the container. After doing a bit of digging I found that it goes by a couple of names, mostly the already mentioned coffee essence, but also coffee extract (extracto de café) and liquid coffee concentrate (café concentrado líquido). I would assume that could be found in a lot of places other places with coffee in Latin America, like Colombia and Mexico. As far as a recipe is concerned, the best I could find, without going and asking the owner of a place that has some on its tables, was using 200ml of water and 250g of coffee, and bringing the water to a boil, cutting off the heat, adding half of the coffee and wait for it to get to room temperature to filter, then get the first extraction up to a boil, add the rest of the coffee and wait until it’s room temperature before filtering. But being that it is something made in so many places this could very well taste different from what you had, but for what is worth most of the recipes I could find described this method, so it could be it. Hope this helps
The struggle of adequately capturing James' joy with respect to the skull ice cubes is apparent. If there's a long shot of this, can there please be a directors cut?
The existence of slurp-free audio tracks on these videos is so, so, so wonderful. A HUGE thanks to you! (Oh right, also for the video, it was great too.) Misophonia makes me avoid most coffee content on TH-cam, unfortunately.
Once upon a time I worked for a biotech company that had a Lyophiliser and I was always tempted to misuse it to freeze dry my espresso. But the pharma-related chemicals we ran through it dissuaded me. Excellent topic, thanks for covering it
Pharmaceutical chemist here, when we lyophilize (freeze dry) compounds we use a container (glass) and freeze it by rotatinging in a dry ice/acetone bath. Then the container is put into the lyophilizer which boils off the water and dries the compound. Your tasting of "rubber" could be from your silicon ice cube trays that you froze in. Suggest you try a direct freeze of container in dry ice/acetone bath or liquid nitrogen before placing the container into the lyophilizer.
Do all the tray slots have to be occupied for the machine to turn on? Maybe put the tray with skull ice in the middle tray and leave the 2 tray spots above it empty, ie not put the trays inside at all
Yeah!!! You got a freeze dryer! We have been doing this for a few years now. I use it for travel. It works well when you are stuck in a vehicle for hours and hours. This beats road side or train coffee any day, We blitz it in our food processor after it is dried… especially the one with cream (or milk). I do one with cream and the other one without. Hubs add his sweetener afterwards. My key is to use really really good coffee and add some salt to it. I pre-freeze directly on the tray. The tray is frozen when I pour it… it is poured and goes into the flash freeze section of my freezer. Don’t overfill. Reconstitute… I use about a teaspoon or less per cup. Put it in the cup with just about a teaspoon of cold or room temp water, stir it up, then add super hot water.
We thought about that. But there was still a tiny bit of it in the better batch that froze faster that never came into contact with the molds. (It’s also a different kind of rubber taste.)
@@jameshoffmann Could be something to do with your freezer? If you had access to a commercial chiller to cool it down really quick and then stick it into a freezer that would be ideal.
For anyone wanting to try freeze concentration, it doesn't require direction freezing. Freeze concentration happens by allowing the ice to melt with the flavorful liquid melting first and discarding the still-frozen water. Bars typically do it to fruit juices -- like pineapple juice.
Positively surprised to see my mug in the video, AND paired with a cool experiment of making quality instant coffee ❣ Makes my day and simply so happy to see it being used in your studio. 🙏🙏🙏
Bovril mentioned, means I can drop the one fact I know about it, which is that the "vril" part of it is named for a popular 19th century sci-fi novel. Vril was a high-energy compound consumed the ancient subterranean Vril-ya beings, who invade the surface world in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "The Coming Race."
The weird pseudo-orientalist post-Victorian racial fantasy stuff that people like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft dipped into in this time period is so absolutely fascinating, if occasionally depressing.
For the sake of completeness, the first syllable is from Latin "bos" = ox, bull or cow. The description "English beef drink" is not entirely accurate: it seems it was originally made by a Scotsman living in Canada to provision the French army.
@@chriswalker2753 Provenance like, “originally made by a Scotsman living in Canada to provision the French army,” is the sort of thing that usually leads to our declaring something A Canadian Invention, but it seems that for this one, we’re letting the English take the hit.
In terms of freezing quickly, liquid nitrogen can be bought fairly easily from most welding places. If you let droplets of the coffee fall in and freeze one at a time, they'll be flash frozen and should be easy to load into the trays as a bonus.
Another experiment would be to see if there is any difference between dropping directly on Liquid Nitrogen or Flash freezing it in a Liquid Nitrogen Bain-Marie recepient. In theory Nitrogen should be Inert and not react with coffee. But it's worth the experiment.
I've tried freeze concentrating in the pat. The best way to achieve a nice result is to periodically visit the freezing material and remove the top layer of ice, while the underlying layers are still liquid. It makes the whole process easier.
This is fascinating stuff! My impression of the science behind coffee making is, there are some things in the bean that you want to extract and a few things you don't; so you always try to skew the brewing process to favour the wanted over the unwanted (for instance, not heating the water all the way to 100º; and usually you try to limit the extraction time, either by passing the liquid once through a quantity of coffee grounds as in an Espresso or filter machine, or by squishing the coffee grounds back down into one solid lump so only a much smaller amount of surface area remains in contact with the water as in a cafetière). Now if you're going to dry and later reconstitute your liquid coffee, you run the risk of either introducing something new you don't want (e.g. by double-concentrating any impurities that were present in the water; ideally, one end of the process would need to be done using de-ionised water) or losing something you did want (e.g. by evaporating away some of the desirable flavour-giving substances during the drying process). Someone who is much more familiar with the chemical and physical properties of the substances present in good and bad coffee would know for sure, but I reckon you might have to use slightly "sub-optimal" parameters for the freeze-drying process in order to tweak it in favour of coffee. It's actually pretty impressive that it works at all, really; let alone that you can get _actually good_ instant coffees! (Though I think in some countries, the dire state of what passes for instant coffee might have a touch of political motivation .....)
Yeah I definitely think you're right about the freezing being the problem with the first batch. For one, the rubbery-ness probably came from the rubber of the moulds. For two, the clear ice moulds aren't just slow, they're VERY deliberately SUPER slow because that allows the ice to more effectively purge the impurities.
I think a good starting point would be cold brew concentrate. You can get it as strong as espresso, you're starting close to the freezing point already, and you can do the actual brewing in a sealed container. As another user commented, you'd probably want to use distilled water as well.
My thoughts exactly re: cold brew concentrate. About using distilled water, removing all of the minerals is detrimental to flavour (as a master craft beer brewer once told me, he uses reverse osmosis, and then adds minerals back in to mimic water sources from around the world).
You can actually buy packets of minerals meant to condition your water to make better coffee. It is a specialty coffee making product, for making espresso.
James, I think you meant "Antoines Equation" at 5:30 which describes the vapor pressure a liquid has at different temperatures. That directly correlates it to its "boiling point" at certain pressures. For Example at 100°C the vapor pressure of water is around 1,013 bar or 1 atm. So to make Water boil at 20°C you have to bring the pressure to around 0,023 bar. Great Video as always!
I was thinking of the Clausius-Clapeyron Relation, relating pressure, temperature, and latent heat (heat required to cause a phase transition at a given temperature) But it turns out that Antoine's is derived from Clausius-Clapeyron! so both are relevant, I think :)
i'm not even into coffee, i kinda hate it, never had a cup i truly liked, but i'm enjoying your videos and i love your way of explaining things and your tone of voice. very chill, relaxing videos!
The number of times I’ve thought about trying to make my own instant coffee in my freeze dryer (I also have a Harvest Right) but being afraid it wouldn’t be good is not a small number. Now I don’t have to do my own experiment. Thank you, once again, James Hoffman for the coffee science. Also, yes, freeze dryers are cool. I like to freeze dry marshmallows, powder them, and it makes a weirdly delicious coffee creamer of sorts. 😊
Hi, quite interesting. I have worked in an industry that used freeze drying. The concentrated product was poured onto the trays and frozen. Surface area is important for the process to work efficiently. Freeze either in the dryer or a separate - 20° freezer. The carrier was demineralised water, this could also be important in your experiment. Demineralised water is not to be ingested, though it's the purest and it's sublimed off during the warming. When opening the door and extracting the powder , it will pull in moisture from the room or environment. It's easy to contaminate the end product. Also, the powder is extremely likely to dust off. Simply put, you can easily breath in the dust particles. Free drying is an exact process, and protocol should be followed for the best results. I know first hand, home made freeze dried coffee is pleasant. We did freeze dry produce in down time. Fruit was a particular favourite, and now we see freeze dried fruit powder available for the the food industry at at very high cost. Berries and bananas are exquisite when freeze dried. I have considered a home built freeze drier, once you understand the principles the rewards should be worth it. Great channel, and all the best to you.
your exploration of homemade instant coffee is fascinating! It's a great example of experimentation and pushing the boundaries of traditional coffee-making methods. ☕
I 100% agree, it very likely is and I have also experienced this. While freezing time and oxidation could play a part, it has to be the molds. Low quality coffee is associated with rubbery flavors but considering he knows his coffee, occam's razor applies.
Do you think that it would affect the results if you accelerated the freezing process even further with dry ice or liquid nitrogen? I'm not sure how you would implement either of those. I think the simplest way to use either would be to set the bowl that the coffee is being brewed into in either of those to get it colder faster. The fastest way to get everything frozen, I think, it would be to set the baking sheet on a bed of dry ice and then brew the espresso directly into it. It would spread out the coffee very thin and make the surface area far bigger than putting it into a standardly cold bowl first and then the baking sheet into a freezer. You could put the corner of the baking sheet where the bowl would normally go, or you could get everything colder Even quicker by brewing the coffee into a funnel, having it go down a length of tube surrounded on all sides by dry ice (not sure how long) and then dropping from the end of that onto the baking sheet resting on the bed of dry ice. After that it goes into the freezer. If I remember correctly you said the process that you used in this video took 30 minutes to go from brewed to frozen? I wouldn't be surprised if doing it like this could freeze it in 10 minutes or less.
For faster home freezing. I suggested an inverse cold bath. Bowl with ice, salt and water. And onother metal bowl on top with the coffee. Just stir it with a spoon. And stray to the freezer. Dont need the ice balls. Could works nice :D
One of the trick with instant coffee is to first put room-temperature water in it, so that once you add the boiling water, it doesn't scorch the coffee that's already been brewed and frieze dried. It totally changes the flavor and reduces the bitterness! Give it a shot !
it's a myth that hot water "scorches" the coffee. What very hot water does is to extract more efficiently from the ground coffee, which may be desirable or undesirable depending on the coffee and the drinker preference, but that does not apply here since the freeze-dried coffee already is the result of extraction.
@@myopiczeal Just thinking aloud, but is it more that by drinking it at a lower temperature you're able to taste more flavours anyway? I had a cup from my Aeropress earlier, and the last part of it cooled down quite a lot before I drank it all - and if anything it tasted better than the initial few sips of much hotter liquid. Could be the same with the instant - though I have to admit I'm not about to do a taste test on it....
I love freeze driers :) Pro tip, you can microplane/grate your frozen product onto the tray to get a beautifully small pieces! Edit: could always pull the shots of espresso with filters below the puck! A popular technique these days and would save a step in this first pass process :)
I don’t have any tricks for making freeze dried coffee, but I do have a trick for drinking it. My friend taught me not to think of it as instant “coffee” but instead to think of it as a “coffee drink”. Comparing it to fresh brewed coffee will always leave you disappointed, but thinking of it as its own drink and it leaves room to enjoy it for its unique characteristics.
James not sure how long you had the freeze dryer in your posession, but one of the things that is recommended online is to freeze dry wet bread first to ensure you remove any contaminants from the manufacturing process first.
I get instant from a local specialty roaster for camping. It's way better than it should be, and definitely good enough for when there's a reason to go for instant instead of a pour over.
a number of notes, from someone who likes to just make things, and cook up experiments. (I've made my own coffee hard candies before, even.) ---if you really want to freeze quickly, it's all about surface area- pouring onto a frozen ball is the smallest surface area you'll get- if you were to freeze a bunch of ball bearings and run it through them you could potentially get near-instant freezing, and don't forget freezing is more than just frozen water. you can set a freezer to get VERY cold. You can even run salty water through a brass coil, and have a cup of coffee interact with multiple gallons of below freezing water. but that method can be automated and probably approaches industry tech. ---if you want to get more extractables, simply grind it far finer, and don't be afraid of the espresso solids. that stuff making it thicker is a part of the drink too! if it's closer to a molecular powder, then basically all of it will be able to dissolve if possible. note that this would need a rather wide and thin press, lower temp water, and grinding super fine can induce heat into the coffee. ---scientists recently discovered that if you increase the surface area of water, and hit it with green light, it sublimates much more readily even at pressure! how would you use this? no clue! ---there's a reason it gets stored in nitrogen. I have a feeling it will oxidize or decompose readily, and that if you could sort of press them into spherules and in the fridge in a jar(not freezer), it would degrade in storage much slower. It may even be worth it to make your own custom instant coffee packets, so you can take it on trips. ---I find that I can get much better flavor in coffees used to make other things, with lighter roasts at lower temps and overpacked shots. it's a little wasteful, but it really does hold up better to processing. I think darker roasts have more volatiles that would escape with sublimation, as the volatiles can break down into a gas, and in vacuum. if you were to pull shots into an already air-filled, airtight container, and freeze that, those volatiles will be less inclined to escape. perhaps you could hold onto something else that way? ---...so I guess what I'm saying.... pour shots into an airtight cup or box (you'll need to add more pressure to overcome it, if you're filling half the empty space) filled with frozen ball bearings, freeze it, then crush and freeze-dry the puck and pick the ball bearings out later for reuse. or leave em in, I'm not your boss. Then use a pill press to turn it into pellets with less surface area for storage. "would you like one, two, or three portions of espresso?"
Love the video James, as someone who enjoys but knows very little about coffee I love the clear and simple way you explain everything, I learn something from every video I watch - thank you! 😊
LN2 and dry ice (frozen CO2) are readily available in the US, and would be far more ideal for the initial freezing. Non-commercial freezers simply aren't powerful enough to extract heat quickly. It's possible to craft a freezer box fairly cheaply that houses you choice of super-coolers. Dry ice in a simple styrofoam cooler, with the pan set directly on top of the ice will flash-freeze even boiling-hot coffee. LN2 is even faster, but you would need to pour it directly into the pan of coffee, so it's not as safe (I suppose you could pour beside the pan while it's sat in a cooler, and let the flow under/around/over prevent splashes...). On a different note, they sell those exact same freeze driers at my local sporting goods store (for hunting and camping food purposes). I hadn't paid any attention to them, but now I'm genuinely interested. Might have to check them out.
@@nylesnettleton88 Interesting idea - seen that on a chefsteps video back in the day with carbonating fruit. Then again, i am sure you can find carbonated coffee in Japanese vending machines?
Rubber heating mats on the harvest right will impart flavour (and when new, give you headaches if you drink the coffee). You can get great results if you use the eutectic points of the compounds you want to preserve. Also, make sure you have control over the drying profiles.
As someone who owns several freeze dryers, i have to ask if you made sure to pre run it 2 times with Bread on all of the trays. Because when i did my first Freeze dryer load i only did the bread thing once, do it twice. If you are feeling more frisky a liquid nitrogen flash freeze will get you fantastic frozen coffee.
Next time you want to freeze something as fast as possible, have in mind that hot liquids freeze faster than liquids at room temperature. The difference in temperature creates currents that make it lose energy faster.
If those were silicone ice trays you froze your coffee in, that may be where the rubbery note came from. I've had silicone moulds donate a district rubbery taste to my ice and baked goods in the past.
You could use dry ice and isoproypl alcohol for a quick freezing solution for the brewed coffee. If you used dry ice alone and brewed directly over it would carbonate and acidify the frozen coffee. You can break up the dry ice into a tray and then cover with isopropyl alcohol. Place a second tray over the first and let the whole thing get to the dry ice temperature. From there you could brew onto the tray directly or pour freshly brewed onto the tray and it should freeze in minutes if not close to instantly. Be careful as the alcohol can cause freezer burns and will soak into things like cloth so use silicone gloves to insulate and prevent spills causing burns.
The directional freezing coffee was *not* a failure! It didn't give you the expected result, but you still learnt from it. As long as you learn something from an experiment, it succeeded.
There are lessons in failure. You can say you failed something and still say it was a positive experience, you shouldn't think of "failure" as a scary word and avoid using it.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 The point of an experiment is to learn what happens when you do X. They learnt what happens so they didn't fail; experiments can fail if they're too inconclusive to draw any conclusions, but that's not what happened here. What you're describing is attempting to make something and failing to make it, but if you attempt something with the sole goal of reaching a particular outcome then what you're doing is no longer an experiment, at least in the scientific sense, but rather a manufacturing trial.
An adage I once heard: Every experiment turns out right. But not necessarily the way you expect it to. And there's no guarantee that you understand it.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 It's not about failure being a scary word, it's about understanding what an experiment is. An experiment is a way of learning - if you learn, it succeeded. experiments can definitely go wrong and fail to teach you anything about what you were testing, but that's not what happened in the video. If you're trying to get a specific results then it's not really an experiment in the first place, at least not in the scientific sense I was using, but something more like a manufacturing trial or a prototyping a method.
This was great take on how coffee tastes when the chemical composition has to do work to get there. You should also make a video on most practical ways of how to best store an already brewed coffee to still taste great.
Wild how you and Lance Hendrick both posted videos about instant coffee within 24 hours of each other. Is instant coffee having a moment? Not complaining mind you :)
That process of directional freezing pushing impurities out is actually used in semiconductor engineering too, to improve the purity of big pieces of silicon or germanium.
Very interesting experiment. One thing I know for sure about freezing - hot water freezes faster than room temperature water in regular freezer. And about the market - I think it is already there, today I saw 30 gram premium anchovy in Spanish tapas bar for 35 pounds meal and it didn't seam outrageous.
A recommendation for cooling that should be easy to recreate to speed the process. While I was in the Navy I worked with liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen, and one of the things we would do is drip drinks into a clean tray of liquid nitrogen to flash freeze them. While liquid nitrogen isn't super easy to come by, dry ice is, you could brew your coffee directly onto dry ice in order to have it basically flash freeze near instantly
If the trick is rapid freezing send like you do it one of 3 other ways 1. Drip it straight into N2(l) scoop it out place on the tray. 2. Float a tray in N2(l) pouring the coffee in the tray. 3. Surround a tube with N2(l) pour the coffee through the tube onto a catch freezing it as it falls through the tube.
If it's about time to freeze, maybe this can be optimized by using some dry ice? Have your try pre-super-chilled on a bed of dry ice and pour directly onto that? Thanks a million for your videos. Especially the tasting parts and your facial expressiveness. Very relatable.
Ah, how delightful it is to witness progress! In the year 2024, James Hoffmann unveils a revolutionary innovation: instant coffee. A true masterpiece of coffee culture, elevating the enjoyment of this exquisite beverage to new heights. Yet, let us also reflect on the long journey we have traversed to reach this point. From the discovery of the first coffee beans nestled in the depths of the Ethiopian highlands to the refined techniques and methods of modern coffee production - each stage marked by dedication, exploration, and innovation. And now, in this epic moment, the circle completes as we celebrate instant coffee as the latest achievement. A moment of joy, a moment of laughter, a moment that demonstrates the boundless nature of human ingenuity. 😂😂😂
You can make a cryogenic bath with dry ice and rubbing alcohol. If you were to suspend a thin thermally conductive container partway in such a cryogenic bath and pour coffee into the container, the chilled alcohol could freeze the coffee in a few minutes without contaminating it. Alternatively, you might get good results by stirring dry ice powder into your coffee.
One thing I and a few people I knew in the military would do with instant coffee: Many MRE kits come with "coffee" kits that include a powdered creamer, a sugar packet, and a packet of instant coffee. We figured out if you mixed all 3 packets together, poured the contents into your mouth and let it warm in your mouth for a moment, the powders would sort of melt & gel together into a sort of intense coffee-flavored chewy candy. Very sweet and creamy and intensely coffee flavoured.
Okay, so, no one tell my PhD supervisor, but I've experimented with making instant coffee using our lab's freeze dryer. I had access to a pretty nice super automatic espresso machine in the building, so I brewed into a pre-chilled container, and then flash-froze the coffee in liquid nitrogen. From brew to solid ice in less than a minute. This then went onto the freeze dryer overnight, and it was done by the next day. It tasted quite good, but I agree with James, there is something lost in the process that I can't quite explain. Fun experiment, but definitely super inefficient.
Write it down so the next generation can improve it 😂
I hope your biosafety department does not read this!😅
what about extracting the coffee straight into the liquid nitrogen and putting in freeze dryer?
@@marcelbuhler1157 they would autoclave me.
I'm guessing that you lose quite a bit of the tasty volatile aromatics in the freeze drying process despite all efforts to preserve them by freezing the liquid as fast as possible. It's not just water boiling off at those low pressures.
Ben from Hasty Coffee in Canada here - Seems like specialty instant is trending on TH-cam this week! We've been scaling freeze-dried for 4 years for us and over 40 coffee roasters and it is very difficult on a small scale.
If you have 2-300k to dump into equipment you could produce an economically viable specialty instant on a small-medium scale. We've had to get creative and do some very risky in-house engineering and waste a ton of cash on blowing stuff up. It's been a wild ride but we've created a fantastic instant process now and I can't imagine a world without it.
Always happy to forward some samples for comparison!
The amount of coffee nerds happily exchanging thoughts in the comments is the whole reason for internet existing. You guys are awesome and Canada is my favourite American country.
So what you're saying is, we shouldn't expect James to give away the freeze drying machine to a patron?
Do you freeze it first? I always thought the benefit of a freeze dryer was how fast it freezes. If you leave coffee to sit to come to room temp, the exposure to air gives it a lousy taste. So if you do that first, aren’t you just gonna end up concentrating that flavor?
@@hopegold883 If you have an industrial freeze dryer you could freeze it in the machine. Harvest Rights like in the video on the other hand are pretty much useless for coffee production. If you freeze in the machine you’re on track for a big mess.
Hello from a coffee Canuck in Nova Scotia! ...S'cuse me while I go scour the internets for your stores/socials/etc. 😂😅❤
'These are skull ice cubes of pure espresso' is the most metal thing that I've ever heard James say.
And utterly wonderful - I have got to get some. Who knows James may as much a metal head as any of us - I can well imagine him in the mosh pit. Or maybe just chilling back to some old skool AC/DC or Metallica.
What sort of metal does the Hoffman listen to? To be honest I would think he's into progressive metal like Animals as Leaders as Tosin really shreds
@@annakissed3226Polyphia seems to fit his personality. But as for what he enjoys in music? And if it even is metal? Certainly interesting questions.
"skull of pure espresso" its James rock band
Thought it was a Meshuggah lyric for a second.
But does it top “Personally I don’t like rubber in my brewing area” ? “ Or even “I enjoy a bit of violence in my basket” ?
I'm loving that this video has activated all the chemistry nerds who are secretly using their insanely expensive specialist work lab equipment for making illicit homebrew instant coffee, and then nerding some more about the exact process. Nerd love
Nothing nerdy about it. Just following a passion
@@o2xbI think you are under the impression that the word is only used as a pejorative. This is the Oxford English Dictionary definition
informal
noun
noun: nerd; plural noun: nerds
1.
a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest.
"the executive is an unabashed film nerd"
Instant Dan from B&W Coffee Roasters here. Thanks for shouting out our vid! The bit about freezing time was fascinating; we don't worry about it too much, but that's mostly a logistical thing. Would be interested to see if different modes of extraction yield different profiles for you to test your espresso theory. We found that a blend of espresso and filter actually produces a better instant than either alone. Would be happy to send along some samples if you want to test some of your experiments side-by-side!
Hi Dan, Lorenzo from Loric Coffee here. Your BTS vid was one of our faves as you share many of our approaches. On freezing time, we found it absolutely makes a big difference in FD time, which then impacts final flavor. The reason for this (and there's whitepapers on this) is that getting the right crystalline structure in the frozen product affects FDing results. I'd be happy to send some product samples to you or James too!
Hi Dan and Lorenzo, BadDoge from "The Internet" here. I have some samples of brown crystals I could send both of you, no guarantee it's instant coffee though.
Did you ever try freeze drying cold brew? I wonder if it might retain its flavors without as many bitter compounds compared to heat extracted coffee.
@@iankrasnow5383 I had the same thought!
Hey Dan - Ben from Hasty Coffee in Canada here. I'd love to exchange some samples if you're interested. I haven't tried your instant before. We use a home-made extraction system but it would be interesting to compare profiles.
I work in a research lab (some weird field called 'proteomics'), where we try to understand proteins using ridiculously expensive and complicated instruments ('mass spectrometers'). Sample preparation involves chopping up our proteins into 'peptides' using an enzyme (trypsin) and 'drying' the peptide-containing solution in a little vacuum centrifuge/vacuum concentrator (so called Speecvac), which makes our samples more suitable for storage. One trick we use to speed up the drying process is to first 'snap-freeze' our sample in liquid nitrogen before we place the frozen peptide-containing sample into the Speedvac for drying. You could kind of steal that idea to potentially improve your instant coffee: Idea 1): Directly extract your coffee into liquid nitrogen (or into a container placed in liquid nitrogen) and then transferring your 'snap-frozen' coffee into the freeze-dryer (you may want to add a bit of liquid nitrogen into the drying tray to prevent the coffee from thawing again). Idea 2): get some dry ice and extract your coffee directly into your dry ice. This will probably form some sort of frozen coffee crystal/dry ice mixture, which you could then spread out on your freeze-drying tray (without your coffee starting to thaw again) to start the drying process. The dry ice should just sublimate (released as CO2) during the drying process. The dry ice approach could be a bit messy, though (you may want to wear a lab coat and some protective glasses)... These approaches may address three problems: 1) Freezing your coffee much more quickly (which, as you mentioned, is essential to get tasty coffee); 2) Preventing your coffee from thawing while you distribute your coffee onto the tray of the freeze-drying machine, as I my gut feeling tells me that repetitive freeze-thawing may not really promote your coffee taste; 3) Speeding up your drying process, which may also help you create better tasting coffee. The cold temperatures and the fact that you have a lot of gas (CO2 or N2) surrounding your coffee may also reduce the amount of oxidation, and thus, preserve taste (although that's really just a naïve hypothesis...). Anyhow, would be interesting to see you play around with coffee and dry ice/liquid N2🥶😅. Really enjoy your channel, keep up the good work!
Hah, you had the same idea as me. Basically liquid nitrogen ice cream. Dry ice is probably a no-go though because CO2 and water react to make acid, which will result in a bitter coffee. Nitrogen is pretty chemically stable and shouldn't really have any impact on the flavor.
Slurp-free audio track is the kind of innovation I expect from this channel.
I was hoping for "Slurp" to be read out instead of silence, sadly.
I’m tempted to do this in future
@@jameshoffmannyes!!
And maybe a B roll audio track of only slurps for us, weirdos. :D
@@jameshoffmannit's a clever use of the feature and greatly appreciated.
I reckon James could be obsessed with door knobs and his passion and media quality would still have thousands of us hooked. It’s really magnetic.
Not a hack, but a little bit of science. I know the natural impurities of your water are important to the taste of your coffee. If you brew a cup of coffee with water that you like to drink and then freeze dry it, it will have all the impurities your water had. Then, if you reconstitute it with the exact same amount of the water you like to drink, the resultant cup will have double the number of salts/other impurities as the fresh cup. Some ways around this might be: a) to brew an extremely concentrated batch of coffee with water you like to drink and then reconstitute it at a more normal concentration for drinking. b) to brew your coffee with distilled water and reconstitute it with water you like to drink. c) to brew your coffee with water you like to drink and reconstitute it with distilled water. The problem with option c is that if you're in a situation where you are using instant coffee you probably don't have distilled water to hand. I'm not really tempted to use instant coffee as I just make some, even if I'm camping or traveling. I have a tiny french press and a little rocket stove that fits in my bag easily. Mostly I see uses for instant coffee in baking and there, maybe it's not necessary to get The Best cup of instant. Anyway, for the sake of science it might be fun to compare those three options I presented.
We did actually brew the instant with distilled but figured this detail was too much for the video!
@@jameshoffmann I think you might be underestimating your viewership's tolerance/hunger for such detail. Maybe create a second channel with the bits that don't make it into the more polished main content? 😊
@@LiveFreeOrDieDH I second this idea.
I feel like brew with prefered water reconst with distilled is the play, just because the extraction would be what youd be expecting already
@@jameshoffmann Would it not have been better - purely for the best cup of instant question - to have brewed with that water you think is best for brewing coffee (since the salts/metals are important for extraction) and then make your coffee using the freeze-dried coffee but with distilled water, which is just because you don't want double the salts/metals? Oh also, it would be very cool to potentially use liquid nitrogen to speed up the freezing process.
The "slurp-free" track is a kind of wonderful example of how much you and your team care about the quality of your videos. I don't personally mind the slurping but it says a lot that you're willing to put in a little more effort to make your videos better in that small way.
Thoughtful care for the misophoniacs in the audience. Nice.
Never clicked so fast. Missed you James.
I didn't realize how much I missed him until he came back!
Ditto. Absolutely! There simply are no words to describe how brilliantly and delightfully entertaining he is. BTW, this means I don't have to second guess my decision to pass on the purchase of a freeze dryer. They are ridiculously expensive.
As someone who has suffered from misophonia their entire life, thank you so much for making a separate audio track available.
Me too. Slurping is ok but talking while chewing makes me unbearably enraged. Cheers, I agree that this is thoughtful.
"If you dont know Bovril, well done.
If you do know Bovril, good times!"
I know Bovril only trough James May / Top Gear ^^
And the thought of Bovril'esque coffee makes me shudder a bit.
"Indispensable for invalids and weak persons- You can't say that!"
Edit: lest I anger the God of citations and plagiarism, Hbomberguy, "Woke Brands" video
He likes to paint himself all over in it. It's like baby oil to him. That's what he does. Him and his lorry driver friends all bovrilled up and then they slip about, that's what they do.
Good times indeed. Must be a James thing.
Think of it like instant beef soup😅
Bovril is not bad on toast- a close second to marmite. As a drink tho it’s rancid.
Thanks for this video, James. I broke a $700 lens today at work. ( I work in video.) and I just needed to unwind and think about something else. I love coffee. I use your V60 method every morning with my daughter. And your work always transports me to a better place. Thanks for that.
James' face after tasting the dried espresso is exactly what the doctor ordered for all our woes. Bless him! (it's at 10:24)
Wow, my mom bought one of these freeze drying units a few years ago and started freeze drying everything she could think of and ended up making some really interesting fun snacks or stored ingredients. And James Hoffman is using it! This is the first time I have ever had some real-life experience with one of the crazy fancy appliances he buys for a project!! And very possibly the last time…
The rubberiness may be at least partially coming from the tray bay in the Harvest Right. The silicone and glue in the bay can take a few batches to "burn off" on brand new Harvest Right machines. You also want to make sure that there's not too much oil in the pump as that can cause the oil to get into the food. Great episode btw! I'm going to have to try this asap!
Could it not also be coming from the silicone ice cube moulds
That was my thought. Silicone food molds often leave the food with a weird taste/smell.
Agreed, those silicone ice moulds should probably be dishwashered a few times if they were new. Putting warm liquids in probably wouldn’t help with the rubberiness!
I thought the exact same thing about the ice cube molds
I have had a coffee on my mind for a while now and this feels like a good time to bring it up.
A few years back, I was visiting Peru with my (now) wife. We decided to take a trip out to the Manu forest from Cuzco. On our drive we made various stops at little family-owned cafes, on the one road heading out to the Amazon rain forest.
I noticed a staple on every Peruvian dining table in the mornings, it looked to be a coffee concentrate in a glass cruet bottle with a cork in the top.
The locals would just add a bit of this with hot water from the kettle to make, in short, instant coffee. It was strong stuff. And the concentrate apparently keeps for days at a time.
I haven't found much information online about this, but I would love to learn more about it. If anyone can shed some light on Peruvian coffee culture, I would greatly appreciate it.
I always enjoy your videos James. Thank you, and your team, for all you hard work.
Sounds like a local version of Camp coffee, an instant coffee in a bottle now used more in cooking than for drinking.
@@vladd6787 Thank you! looked into it and this is the closest explanation I have heard so far.
Hi there! Not from Peru but what you described sounds exactly like coffee essence (esencia de café) that we have in Ecuador, down to the description of the container.
After doing a bit of digging I found that it goes by a couple of names, mostly the already mentioned coffee essence, but also coffee extract (extracto de café) and liquid coffee concentrate (café concentrado líquido).
I would assume that could be found in a lot of places other places with coffee in Latin America, like Colombia and Mexico.
As far as a recipe is concerned, the best I could find, without going and asking the owner of a place that has some on its tables, was using 200ml of water and 250g of coffee, and bringing the water to a boil, cutting off the heat, adding half of the coffee and wait for it to get to room temperature to filter, then get the first extraction up to a boil, add the rest of the coffee and wait until it’s room temperature before filtering. But being that it is something made in so many places this could very well taste different from what you had, but for what is worth most of the recipes I could find described this method, so it could be it.
Hope this helps
Highly disappointed that this didn't end with liquid nitrogen to flash freeze espresso before freeze drying. Amazing sweater game as always.
Liquid nitrogen is easily available and I am also slightly disappointed
Yeah, after seeing Nigel do it in NileBlue I missed the liquid nitrogen shenanigans
It's annoyingly hard to access in the UK. In the USA it feels like you just roll in with your dewar and fill up...
@@jameshoffmann yes please try
Proper lyophilization requires the liquid nitrogen shenanigans. Otherwise it lacks the fun in science. 🎉
I simply love these experiments you do here, it’s always so fulfilling to see someone talk about something they care. Thank you
The struggle of adequately capturing James' joy with respect to the skull ice cubes is apparent. If there's a long shot of this, can there please be a directors cut?
The existence of slurp-free audio tracks on these videos is so, so, so wonderful. A HUGE thanks to you! (Oh right, also for the video, it was great too.) Misophonia makes me avoid most coffee content on TH-cam, unfortunately.
It being "English (United States)" is the sprinkle on top
Once upon a time I worked for a biotech company that had a Lyophiliser and I was always tempted to misuse it to freeze dry my espresso. But the pharma-related chemicals we ran through it dissuaded me. Excellent topic, thanks for covering it
Good choice resisting the urge 😂
Same with me. This machines are somewhat mystical!
Pharmaceutical chemist here, when we lyophilize (freeze dry) compounds we use a container (glass) and freeze it by rotatinging in a dry ice/acetone bath. Then the container is put into the lyophilizer which boils off the water and dries the compound. Your tasting of "rubber" could be from your silicon ice cube trays that you froze in. Suggest you try a direct freeze of container in dry ice/acetone bath or liquid nitrogen before placing the container into the lyophilizer.
James, try it with cold brew.
Not freeze-drying the coffee in skull form might be the greatest missed opportunity this channel has ever experienced
I think that would sell itself.
I wish I could have but they wouldn’t fit in the trays…
Do all the tray slots have to be occupied for the machine to turn on? Maybe put the tray with skull ice in the middle tray and leave the 2 tray spots above it empty, ie not put the trays inside at all
@@minibeefcakeOr put the one above in upside down to increase space
@@minibeefcakeor maybe put the one above upside down
Yeah!!! You got a freeze dryer! We have been doing this for a few years now. I use it for travel. It works well when you are stuck in a vehicle for hours and hours. This beats road side or train coffee any day, We blitz it in our food processor after it is dried… especially the one with cream (or milk). I do one with cream and the other one without. Hubs add his sweetener afterwards.
My key is to use really really good coffee and add some salt to it.
I pre-freeze directly on the tray. The tray is frozen when I pour it… it is poured and goes into the flash freeze section of my freezer. Don’t overfill.
Reconstitute… I use about a teaspoon or less per cup. Put it in the cup with just about a teaspoon of cold or room temp water, stir it up, then add super hot water.
My guess, the rubber flavor was from the presumably silicone lined ice mold you used.
Yep, the release on them is nasty.
With cold water they might be fine, but not with coffee.
We thought about that. But there was still a tiny bit of it in the better batch that froze faster that never came into contact with the molds. (It’s also a different kind of rubber taste.)
@@jameshoffmann Could be something to do with your freezer? If you had access to a commercial chiller to cool it down really quick and then stick it into a freezer that would be ideal.
@@z_nar349 Or try liquid nitrogen to flash-freeze the coffee
For anyone wanting to try freeze concentration, it doesn't require direction freezing. Freeze concentration happens by allowing the ice to melt with the flavorful liquid melting first and discarding the still-frozen water. Bars typically do it to fruit juices -- like pineapple juice.
Positively surprised to see my mug in the video, AND paired with a cool experiment of making quality instant coffee ❣ Makes my day and simply so happy to see it being used in your studio.
🙏🙏🙏
THANK YOU FOR THE SLURP FREE AUDIO, IT IS WONDERFUL
Bovril mentioned, means I can drop the one fact I know about it, which is that the "vril" part of it is named for a popular 19th century sci-fi novel. Vril was a high-energy compound consumed the ancient subterranean Vril-ya beings, who invade the surface world in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "The Coming Race."
The weird pseudo-orientalist post-Victorian racial fantasy stuff that people like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft dipped into in this time period is so absolutely fascinating, if occasionally depressing.
For the sake of completeness, the first syllable is from Latin "bos" = ox, bull or cow. The description "English beef drink" is not entirely accurate: it seems it was originally made by a Scotsman living in Canada to provision the French army.
@@chriswalker2753 Provenance like, “originally made by a Scotsman living in Canada to provision the French army,” is the sort of thing that usually leads to our declaring something A Canadian Invention, but it seems that for this one, we’re letting the English take the hit.
@@ericssmith2014 "... letting the English take the hit." 🤣🤣
We bring instant coffee while backpacking and while I’m never going to make freeze dried coffee myself, I thoroughly enjoyed this 😊
In terms of freezing quickly, liquid nitrogen can be bought fairly easily from most welding places. If you let droplets of the coffee fall in and freeze one at a time, they'll be flash frozen and should be easy to load into the trays as a bonus.
Even dry ice would work.
Another experiment would be to see if there is any difference between dropping directly on Liquid Nitrogen or Flash freezing it in a Liquid Nitrogen Bain-Marie recepient. In theory Nitrogen should be Inert and not react with coffee. But it's worth the experiment.
So coffee dipping dots
I've tried freeze concentrating in the pat. The best way to achieve a nice result is to periodically visit the freezing material and remove the top layer of ice, while the underlying layers are still liquid. It makes the whole process easier.
I'm very glad that you ate it straight. Sign of a man who knows his audience.
Thank you so very much for the slurp free audio track
James Hoffman colluding with his son Lance for an instant coffee revolution
I came here exactly for this comment, salute!
Just what i thought when I saw this
Exactly this
he has a son called Lance?
Was about to comment this
This is fascinating stuff!
My impression of the science behind coffee making is, there are some things in the bean that you want to extract and a few things you don't; so you always try to skew the brewing process to favour the wanted over the unwanted (for instance, not heating the water all the way to 100º; and usually you try to limit the extraction time, either by passing the liquid once through a quantity of coffee grounds as in an Espresso or filter machine, or by squishing the coffee grounds back down into one solid lump so only a much smaller amount of surface area remains in contact with the water as in a cafetière).
Now if you're going to dry and later reconstitute your liquid coffee, you run the risk of either introducing something new you don't want (e.g. by double-concentrating any impurities that were present in the water; ideally, one end of the process would need to be done using de-ionised water) or losing something you did want (e.g. by evaporating away some of the desirable flavour-giving substances during the drying process).
Someone who is much more familiar with the chemical and physical properties of the substances present in good and bad coffee would know for sure, but I reckon you might have to use slightly "sub-optimal" parameters for the freeze-drying process in order to tweak it in favour of coffee.
It's actually pretty impressive that it works at all, really; let alone that you can get _actually good_ instant coffees! (Though I think in some countries, the dire state of what passes for instant coffee might have a touch of political motivation .....)
Literally just finished watching a video Sir Lance put out on instant coffee, and here you are! What a time to be alive!
Sir Lance 😂
Same thing happened with me lol
@JamesHoffman loving the new video drop time for those of us on the West Coast of North America! We can watch you as we brew our first cup of the day
Yeah I definitely think you're right about the freezing being the problem with the first batch. For one, the rubbery-ness probably came from the rubber of the moulds. For two, the clear ice moulds aren't just slow, they're VERY deliberately SUPER slow because that allows the ice to more effectively purge the impurities.
I think a good starting point would be cold brew concentrate. You can get it as strong as espresso, you're starting close to the freezing point already, and you can do the actual brewing in a sealed container. As another user commented, you'd probably want to use distilled water as well.
My thoughts exactly re: cold brew concentrate.
About using distilled water, removing all of the minerals is detrimental to flavour (as a master craft beer brewer once told me, he uses reverse osmosis, and then adds minerals back in to mimic water sources from around the world).
You can actually buy packets of minerals meant to condition your water to make better coffee.
It is a specialty coffee making product, for making espresso.
Yes I really think this should be repeated with cold brew
James, I think you meant "Antoines Equation" at 5:30 which describes the vapor pressure a liquid has at different temperatures. That directly correlates it to its "boiling point" at certain pressures. For Example at 100°C the vapor pressure of water is around 1,013 bar or 1 atm. So to make Water boil at 20°C you have to bring the pressure to around 0,023 bar. Great Video as always!
I was thinking of the Clausius-Clapeyron Relation, relating pressure, temperature, and latent heat (heat required to cause a phase transition at a given temperature)
But it turns out that Antoine's is derived from Clausius-Clapeyron! so both are relevant, I think :)
James is always instant gratification.
I see what you did there 😏
i'm not even into coffee, i kinda hate it, never had a cup i truly liked, but i'm enjoying your videos and i love your way of explaining things and your tone of voice. very chill, relaxing videos!
The number of times I’ve thought about trying to make my own instant coffee in my freeze dryer (I also have a Harvest Right) but being afraid it wouldn’t be good is not a small number. Now I don’t have to do my own experiment. Thank you, once again, James Hoffman for the coffee science.
Also, yes, freeze dryers are cool. I like to freeze dry marshmallows, powder them, and it makes a weirdly delicious coffee creamer of sorts. 😊
Hi, quite interesting. I have worked in an industry that used freeze drying. The concentrated product was poured onto the trays and frozen. Surface area is important for the process to work efficiently. Freeze either in the dryer or a separate - 20° freezer. The carrier was demineralised water, this could also be important in your experiment. Demineralised water is not to be ingested, though it's the purest and it's sublimed off during the warming. When opening the door and extracting the powder , it will pull in moisture from the room or environment. It's easy to contaminate the end product. Also, the powder is extremely likely to dust off. Simply put, you can easily breath in the dust particles. Free drying is an exact process, and protocol should be followed for the best results. I know first hand, home made freeze dried coffee is pleasant. We did freeze dry produce in down time. Fruit was a particular favourite, and now we see freeze dried fruit powder available for the the food industry at at very high cost. Berries and bananas are exquisite when freeze dried. I have considered a home built freeze drier, once you understand the principles the rewards should be worth it. Great channel, and all the best to you.
James' somewhat joyous delivery in explaining he'll be BLENDING his frozen espresso skulls was honestly beautiful
The world isn't ready for a James Hoffmann x NileRed collab
I agree. I appreciate each of them and I don't think combining them would go well.
I'm going to start incorporating the phrase "domestic best efforts" into my vocabulary.
your exploration of homemade instant coffee is fascinating! It's a great example of experimentation and pushing the boundaries of traditional coffee-making methods. ☕
Maybe the rubbery taste came from your ice cube molds-i have silicone ice cube molds and find they give the ice a bit of a rubbery taste
I 100% agree, it very likely is and I have also experienced this. While freezing time and oxidation could play a part, it has to be the molds. Low quality coffee is associated with rubbery flavors but considering he knows his coffee, occam's razor applies.
I concur
Do you think that it would affect the results if you accelerated the freezing process even further with dry ice or liquid nitrogen? I'm not sure how you would implement either of those. I think the simplest way to use either would be to set the bowl that the coffee is being brewed into in either of those to get it colder faster. The fastest way to get everything frozen, I think, it would be to set the baking sheet on a bed of dry ice and then brew the espresso directly into it. It would spread out the coffee very thin and make the surface area far bigger than putting it into a standardly cold bowl first and then the baking sheet into a freezer. You could put the corner of the baking sheet where the bowl would normally go, or you could get everything colder Even quicker by brewing the coffee into a funnel, having it go down a length of tube surrounded on all sides by dry ice (not sure how long) and then dropping from the end of that onto the baking sheet resting on the bed of dry ice. After that it goes into the freezer. If I remember correctly you said the process that you used in this video took 30 minutes to go from brewed to frozen? I wouldn't be surprised if doing it like this could freeze it in 10 minutes or less.
"If you don't know how freeze dryers work, it's very cool."
Yes, yes they are. 😉☕🤘
For faster home freezing. I suggested an inverse cold bath. Bowl with ice, salt and water. And onother metal bowl on top with the coffee. Just stir it with a spoon. And stray to the freezer. Dont need the ice balls. Could works nice :D
One of the trick with instant coffee is to first put room-temperature water in it, so that once you add the boiling water, it doesn't scorch the coffee that's already been brewed and frieze dried. It totally changes the flavor and reduces the bitterness! Give it a shot !
it's a myth that hot water "scorches" the coffee. What very hot water does is to extract more efficiently from the ground coffee, which may be desirable or undesirable depending on the coffee and the drinker preference, but that does not apply here since the freeze-dried coffee already is the result of extraction.
@@feanaaro8652 Just try it, you'll be surprised!
@@myopiczeal Just thinking aloud, but is it more that by drinking it at a lower temperature you're able to taste more flavours anyway? I had a cup from my Aeropress earlier, and the last part of it cooled down quite a lot before I drank it all - and if anything it tasted better than the initial few sips of much hotter liquid. Could be the same with the instant - though I have to admit I'm not about to do a taste test on it....
I love freeze driers :)
Pro tip, you can microplane/grate your frozen product onto the tray to get a beautifully small pieces!
Edit: could always pull the shots of espresso with filters below the puck! A popular technique these days and would save a step in this first pass process :)
"English beef drink, Bovril"
words I did not expect to hear in that sequence
I don’t have any tricks for making freeze dried coffee, but I do have a trick for drinking it. My friend taught me not to think of it as instant “coffee” but instead to think of it as a “coffee drink”. Comparing it to fresh brewed coffee will always leave you disappointed, but thinking of it as its own drink and it leaves room to enjoy it for its unique characteristics.
Justice for Hames Joffmann! Bring him back!!!
Amen brother!
Hames Joffmann would be a bovril fan I think
We’ve been trying but TH-cam have been deeply uncool about it all.
What happened to hames joffman?
James not sure how long you had the freeze dryer in your posession, but one of the things that is recommended online is to freeze dry wet bread first to ensure you remove any contaminants from the manufacturing process first.
Will I ever do this? No.
Did I watch the whole thing? Yes.
Ditto!
I get instant from a local specialty roaster for camping. It's way better than it should be, and definitely good enough for when there's a reason to go for instant instead of a pour over.
Justice for Hames Joffmann!
James, our favorite joke channel needs your help.
Justice for Hames Joffmann!
Wait what happened?
@@paradise_valley the parody channel, Hames Joffmann was terminated.
@@BizarreBear By the YT gods or by the channel owner?
YT- the owner has come out and said that they’ve already had an appeal to bring it back denied, too
a number of notes, from someone who likes to just make things, and cook up experiments. (I've made my own coffee hard candies before, even.)
---if you really want to freeze quickly, it's all about surface area- pouring onto a frozen ball is the smallest surface area you'll get- if you were to freeze a bunch of ball bearings and run it through them you could potentially get near-instant freezing, and don't forget freezing is more than just frozen water. you can set a freezer to get VERY cold. You can even run salty water through a brass coil, and have a cup of coffee interact with multiple gallons of below freezing water. but that method can be automated and probably approaches industry tech.
---if you want to get more extractables, simply grind it far finer, and don't be afraid of the espresso solids. that stuff making it thicker is a part of the drink too! if it's closer to a molecular powder, then basically all of it will be able to dissolve if possible. note that this would need a rather wide and thin press, lower temp water, and grinding super fine can induce heat into the coffee.
---scientists recently discovered that if you increase the surface area of water, and hit it with green light, it sublimates much more readily even at pressure! how would you use this? no clue!
---there's a reason it gets stored in nitrogen. I have a feeling it will oxidize or decompose readily, and that if you could sort of press them into spherules and in the fridge in a jar(not freezer), it would degrade in storage much slower. It may even be worth it to make your own custom instant coffee packets, so you can take it on trips.
---I find that I can get much better flavor in coffees used to make other things, with lighter roasts at lower temps and overpacked shots. it's a little wasteful, but it really does hold up better to processing. I think darker roasts have more volatiles that would escape with sublimation, as the volatiles can break down into a gas, and in vacuum. if you were to pull shots into an already air-filled, airtight container, and freeze that, those volatiles will be less inclined to escape. perhaps you could hold onto something else that way?
---...so I guess what I'm saying.... pour shots into an airtight cup or box (you'll need to add more pressure to overcome it, if you're filling half the empty space) filled with frozen ball bearings, freeze it, then crush and freeze-dry the puck and pick the ball bearings out later for reuse. or leave em in, I'm not your boss. Then use a pill press to turn it into pellets with less surface area for storage. "would you like one, two, or three portions of espresso?"
Run the coffee through a line chiller then freeze with liquid nitrogen. That should be fast enough.
Or one of those instant ice cream freeze plates like they have on iron chef.
Love the video James, as someone who enjoys but knows very little about coffee I love the clear and simple way you explain everything, I learn something from every video I watch - thank you! 😊
LN2 and dry ice (frozen CO2) are readily available in the US, and would be far more ideal for the initial freezing. Non-commercial freezers simply aren't powerful enough to extract heat quickly. It's possible to craft a freezer box fairly cheaply that houses you choice of super-coolers. Dry ice in a simple styrofoam cooler, with the pan set directly on top of the ice will flash-freeze even boiling-hot coffee. LN2 is even faster, but you would need to pour it directly into the pan of coffee, so it's not as safe (I suppose you could pour beside the pan while it's sat in a cooler, and let the flow under/around/over prevent splashes...).
On a different note, they sell those exact same freeze driers at my local sporting goods store (for hunting and camping food purposes). I hadn't paid any attention to them, but now I'm genuinely interested. Might have to check them out.
Interesting effect of dry ice is that it can wind up carbonating what it comes in contact with - fizzy espresso?
@@nylesnettleton88 Interesting idea - seen that on a chefsteps video back in the day with carbonating fruit. Then again, i am sure you can find carbonated coffee in Japanese vending machines?
I'm really impressed by your slurp-free track. Incredible
English Beef Drink was a grouping of words I didn’t know I needed to hear today. But I did.
What is soup but meat drink?
@@ClanWiEthank you! This is what I’ve been saying for years. No one listens to me.
You’re both so right
Rubber heating mats on the harvest right will impart flavour (and when new, give you headaches if you drink the coffee). You can get great results if you use the eutectic points of the compounds you want to preserve. Also, make sure you have control over the drying profiles.
10:05 James giving a giddy like a little girl is the absolute meme I needed.
I don't even like coffee but I occasionally stumble upon this channel and always have a great time 🤘
First Technology Connections, then ElectroBoom, and now James Hoffman? TH-cam really is giving us all the greats today.
Technology Connections published?? .... I'll be right back
Through the magic of watching two of them
What a joy it would be to happen upon a James Hoffmann meditating on a bench.
❤❤ James is the reason I stay on TH-cam
As someone who owns several freeze dryers, i have to ask if you made sure to pre run it 2 times with Bread on all of the trays. Because when i did my first Freeze dryer load i only did the bread thing once, do it twice. If you are feeling more frisky a liquid nitrogen flash freeze will get you fantastic frozen coffee.
@james hoffman ; since you are adding hot water at the end maybe a cold brew could be good for thid experiment?
Next time you want to freeze something as fast as possible, have in mind that hot liquids freeze faster than liquids at room temperature. The difference in temperature creates currents that make it lose energy faster.
James spent so much on his holiday, he has to drink instant coffee. 😂
Lowering the budget instead of starting his own streaming service. Truly a man of the people.
If those were silicone ice trays you froze your coffee in, that may be where the rubbery note came from. I've had silicone moulds donate a district rubbery taste to my ice and baked goods in the past.
If this man ever made a cup of anything in my presence(17:05) and offered me some, I would say, Yes, please.
You could use dry ice and isoproypl alcohol for a quick freezing solution for the brewed coffee. If you used dry ice alone and brewed directly over it would carbonate and acidify the frozen coffee. You can break up the dry ice into a tray and then cover with isopropyl alcohol. Place a second tray over the first and let the whole thing get to the dry ice temperature. From there you could brew onto the tray directly or pour freshly brewed onto the tray and it should freeze in minutes if not close to instantly. Be careful as the alcohol can cause freezer burns and will soak into things like cloth so use silicone gloves to insulate and prevent spills causing burns.
The directional freezing coffee was *not* a failure! It didn't give you the expected result, but you still learnt from it. As long as you learn something from an experiment, it succeeded.
There are lessons in failure. You can say you failed something and still say it was a positive experience, you shouldn't think of "failure" as a scary word and avoid using it.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 The point of an experiment is to learn what happens when you do X. They learnt what happens so they didn't fail; experiments can fail if they're too inconclusive to draw any conclusions, but that's not what happened here. What you're describing is attempting to make something and failing to make it, but if you attempt something with the sole goal of reaching a particular outcome then what you're doing is no longer an experiment, at least in the scientific sense, but rather a manufacturing trial.
An adage I once heard: Every experiment turns out right. But not necessarily the way you expect it to. And there's no guarantee that you understand it.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 It's not about failure being a scary word, it's about understanding what an experiment is. An experiment is a way of learning - if you learn, it succeeded. experiments can definitely go wrong and fail to teach you anything about what you were testing, but that's not what happened in the video. If you're trying to get a specific results then it's not really an experiment in the first place, at least not in the scientific sense I was using, but something more like a manufacturing trial or a prototyping a method.
This was great take on how coffee tastes when the chemical composition has to do work to get there. You should also make a video on most practical ways of how to best store an already brewed coffee to still taste great.
Wild how you and Lance Hendrick both posted videos about instant coffee within 24 hours of each other. Is instant coffee having a moment? Not complaining mind you :)
That process of directional freezing pushing impurities out is actually used in semiconductor engineering too, to improve the purity of big pieces of silicon or germanium.
Probably never tapped TH-cam notification this fast. Wasn’t disappointed. James is still wearing suberb knitwear
So you clicked on it INSTANTLY? * ba-dum-tss *
Very interesting experiment. One thing I know for sure about freezing - hot water freezes faster than room temperature water in regular freezer.
And about the market - I think it is already there, today I saw 30 gram premium anchovy in Spanish tapas bar for 35 pounds meal and it didn't seam outrageous.
THIS GUY IS A FREAKING LEGEND FOR FITTING AN AUDIO TRACK WITHOUT SLURPING OMG
A recommendation for cooling that should be easy to recreate to speed the process. While I was in the Navy I worked with liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen, and one of the things we would do is drip drinks into a clean tray of liquid nitrogen to flash freeze them. While liquid nitrogen isn't super easy to come by, dry ice is, you could brew your coffee directly onto dry ice in order to have it basically flash freeze near instantly
Could the rubberiness be from the silicone molds?
If the trick is rapid freezing send like you do it one of 3 other ways 1. Drip it straight into N2(l) scoop it out place on the tray. 2. Float a tray in N2(l) pouring the coffee in the tray. 3. Surround a tube with N2(l) pour the coffee through the tube onto a catch freezing it as it falls through the tube.
I'm just waiting for the "freezedryers are cool" merch to drop?
Do this again but instant freeze the coffee with liquid nitrogen! That's what we do at home and it's PERFECT.
I appreciate the slurp free audio track.
If it's about time to freeze, maybe this can be optimized by using some dry ice? Have your try pre-super-chilled on a bed of dry ice and pour directly onto that? Thanks a million for your videos. Especially the tasting parts and your facial expressiveness. Very relatable.
James is the only person that could make me worried that I don't know Bovril
It's like a disappointing miso soup.
@@benjaminm4702 It's essentially a combination of beef bullion and Marmite, but less interesting than either one alone.
We use Bovril frequently here and to us it's nothing more than concentrated beef broth. Nothing special, to us anyway ;)
Ah, how delightful it is to witness progress! In the year 2024, James Hoffmann unveils a revolutionary innovation: instant coffee. A true masterpiece of coffee culture, elevating the enjoyment of this exquisite beverage to new heights. Yet, let us also reflect on the long journey we have traversed to reach this point. From the discovery of the first coffee beans nestled in the depths of the Ethiopian highlands to the refined techniques and methods of modern coffee production - each stage marked by dedication, exploration, and innovation. And now, in this epic moment, the circle completes as we celebrate instant coffee as the latest achievement. A moment of joy, a moment of laughter, a moment that demonstrates the boundless nature of human ingenuity. 😂😂😂
You can make a cryogenic bath with dry ice and rubbing alcohol. If you were to suspend a thin thermally conductive container partway in such a cryogenic bath and pour coffee into the container, the chilled alcohol could freeze the coffee in a few minutes without contaminating it. Alternatively, you might get good results by stirring dry ice powder into your coffee.
One thing I and a few people I knew in the military would do with instant coffee: Many MRE kits come with "coffee" kits that include a powdered creamer, a sugar packet, and a packet of instant coffee. We figured out if you mixed all 3 packets together, poured the contents into your mouth and let it warm in your mouth for a moment, the powders would sort of melt & gel together into a sort of intense coffee-flavored chewy candy. Very sweet and creamy and intensely coffee flavoured.