Our Handcrafted Instant Coffee Process

What makes our Handcrafted Instant Coffee taste so much better than a grocery store brand?
Our specialty coffee selection, precise roasting & freeze dry process.  While other brands outsource the roasting, freeze drying, or packaging, we do every step ourselves under one roof.  We won't cut corners.  And you can taste the difference.

 

Sourcing specialty-grade green coffee beans

Every season, we select the highest-grade specialty coffees available. This is the same coffee we sell as fresh-roasted whole bean coffee.  We don’t “dumb it down” just because it’s instant coffee. Selections are made through a series of blind tastings known as “cuppings” in the coffee world.  We might taste up to 6 coffees from the same region at a time to pick the best of the season.
We work with small importers who we trust to connect us with producers around the world.  We pay well above Fair Trade pricing to support farmers so that they may create lasting income streams to their community, and have the security to improve their cultivation and processing systems. 
 

Our small-batch roasting process

We have years of experience roasting specialty coffee.  Our goal is always to balance sweetness and body while still highlighting the unique characteristics of each coffee.  Some roasters roast their coffee extra dark to mask the characteristics of low grade coffee.  Because we start with premium specialty-grade coffee, there is no need for us to do that.
 

Our Brewing Process

We don’t need to wait days to receive roasted coffee like some makers, so we brew the freshest coffee possible.  We could boil the life out of this stuff to get a higher yield and to bring down the cost, but we don’t. We brew our coffee to precise extraction standards, so you don’t have to think about things like dosage, time, or grind size like you might with whole bean coffee.  We've already taken care of that for you. The result is a smooth, full-bodied coffee with less bitterness.
 

The Art of Freeze-Drying

Yes, it sounds funny, but there is an art to freeze-drying coffee.  Starting with fresh-brewed coffee made a few feet away from the drier certainly helps.  Through our experimentation, we have found that low heat and longer freeze-drying times dramatically improve the taste of our HandCrafted Instant. As with our brewing process, we could take shortcuts, but we choose to offer you the best quality coffee we can make.
 

Packaging

Packaging might not sound like the most interesting part of our process, but it is a key component to our quality. We could choose to outsource this step, but this would result in our product sitting around a packaging facility for a long time.  We can package our HandCrafted Instant Coffee the minute it’s finished, which ensures that it is fresh.  The instant coffee is sealed into individual packets as soon as it is ready. 
Not only does packaging our own product ourselves make our instant coffee delicious, it helps keep more work within the rural community that we love.