How To Make Instant Coffee Powder

So, let’s start with the obvious.  Instant coffee is (for the most part) pretty bad tasting stuff. There are some exceptions but we’ve even bought expensive / premium instant coffee and it still tastes very bitter and lacks depth. But we’re going to show you how to make instant coffee powder - so it tastes good!

Instant coffee is made with a variety of scientific and chemical processes but the key piece is the rapid removal of moisture from, well, coffee - like we would recognise it. But the process of either extreme heat or extreme cold to dry the coffee puts the coffee through a pretty brutal series of processes and it’s hardly any surprise that the flavor is impacted.

Compounding this is the fact that instant coffee is generally a mass market product, and rarely made with award winning or specialty coffee. So, bad coffee + lots of processing = an underwhelming cup (usually, at least).

But, there is another way and it’s also particularly handy if you just don’t have instant coffee to hand but would like to prepare in advance for a road-trip / camping / speedier morning routine. It is possible to make instant coffee powder from the coffee beans or grounds that you already have at home.

Step 1:

In an ideal world use a coffee grinder with a blade (anything like this one).

Step 2:

Measure a few tablespoons of coffee beans into your blade grinder but don’t fill it too much. That extra room will be needed to get the grinds really fine (and we are going for really fine here).

Step 3:

Grind the coffee repeatedly and ensure you’re getting all of the beans.  Consistency of grind with a blade is more difficult than with a burr grinder so some additional watchfulness may be needed.

Step 4:

Keep grinding until the coffee grind has become incredibly fine. Ideally, it’s something like the consistency of flour or confectioner’s sugar.

Step 5 (optional):

If you have a really fine mesh strainer then pass the grinds through it to collect the very finest of the particles from the grinds but ideally your grind is now so fine that everything will pass through most strainers anyway.

Step 6:

Some additional care will need to be given to brewing this coffee too. Since this is a very very fine grind over-extraction is very likely unless preventive measures are taken. Firstly, do not use boiling water. Even coarser grinds for french press coffee only tolerate something around 200 - 205 degrees fahrenheit and this is significantly finer. Ideally run with something between 190 - 200 fahrenheit and even then it may be worth experimenting with pre-brewing the coffee in a little cold water prior to adding the hot water (which is also a really good hack for traditional instant coffee powder).

Step 7:

Add milk, cream, sugar (or whatever) and enjoy.

* And if you want to get really fun then you can use eggshells in your ‘cowboy coffee’ like in this excellent article from Home Grounds.