Understanding How Instant Coffee is Made in Factory by Made Vision

Sourcing: Nestlé sources its premium coffee beans from top regions like Brazil and Vietnam, working with over 100,000 farmers.
Maturation: Coffee plants bloom into white flowers, which mature into vibrant red cherries over 6 to 9 months.
Harvesting: Large farms use specialised harvesting machines equipped with 1,500 vibrating rods on rotating cylinders to gently shake the branches and cause ripe cherries to fall. This allows farmers to collect up to 60 bags of cherries in about 5 hours.

Sorting: Within 8 to 12 hours of harvest, the cherries are taken to a wet mill where a gravity separator tank separates heavy, ripe cherries (which sink) from unripe ones (which float).
De-pulping: Rotating drums press the cherries against fixed plates to separate the juicy pulp from the inner coffee beans.
Fermentation: The beans, still covered in a slimy coating called mucilage, are placed in fermentation tanks with clean water for 12 to 24 hours to naturally break down the coating.
Washing and Drying: After washing the beans until spotless, they are spread out for a sunbath to dry, often turned with rakes for even drying until they reach an ideal moisture level of about 11%.

Hulling: The tough parchment layer is stripped away in a hulling machine, revealing the vibrant green coffee beans.
Storage and Shipping: The green coffee beans are packed into 60kg jute bags, labeled for traceability, and stored in ventilated warehouses before being shipped to the Nescafé factory.
Factory Inspection: Upon arrival, robotic arms unload the heavy bags. A moisture sensor checks humidity, and a robotic probe samples the beans for quality. A sifting machine shakes off debris and removes small or broken beans.
Taste Test: The beans must pass a rigorous taste test by human tasters who sample up to 100 brewed cups a day to ensure the batch meets standards.

Roasting: Beans are fed into a double-walled rotating drum and heated to temperatures between 370 and 540°F for 8 to 20 minutes to develop their aroma and flavour. Lighter roasts retain more caffeine, while darker roasts have bolder flavors but less caffeine.
Cooling: Roasted beans are quickly cooled in a tray with a powerful fan for 5 to 10 minutes to stop the roasting process.
Grinding and Brewing: The cooled beans are ground into a coarse powder, which is then brewed into a strong liquid coffee extract using steam and pressure.

The liquid coffee extract follows one of two drying methods:

Spray Drying (for Nescafé Originals Classic): The liquid extract is turned into a fine mist inside a massive spray dryer. Hot air (1,000°F) instantly evaporates the moisture from the droplets, leaving behind tiny, solid coffee particles (instant coffee powder).
Freeze Drying (for Nescafé Gold): This is a more sophisticated method to lock in flavour and aroma:
1. The extract is condensed into a thick liquid concentrate.
2. It is rapidly cooled in a freezing hall to a bone-chilling minus 58°F.
3. Blades break the frozen coffee ice sheet into tiny coffee granules.
4. Sublimation: The frozen granules are heated to 140°F in a low-pressure tube for 5 hours, causing the frozen moisture to transform directly into vapour (skipping the liquid phase). This preserves the coffee's flavour and leaves perfectly dry granules.

The dried coffee granules are sent to the packaging area, where they are filled into jars in less than a second.
The jars are sealed airtight to lock in freshness, capped, and labeled before being shipped to stores.