Customers crave information. That’s one lesson of the phenomenal development of the coffee world over the past 40 years. For example, the 100-point scale developed by the Specialty Coffee Association established a solid foundation on which the specialty movement could build and grow.
Instant coffee, on the other hand, has lacked a system. Yet it is actually a bigger category than specialty by sales and numbers of consumers throughout much of the world, and it supports millions of producers. Accounting for about 25% of annual coffee consumption, its products have diversified in recent decades, with a growing trend toward premiumization. It is easy to transport, store, and prepare, and is often the ingredient of choice in drinks like iced coffee or sweets like ice cream and cakes.
Long made primarily with robusta, today instant products often contain arabica or blends. You can choose your preferred roast level. There are even single-origin and organic products. Specialty brands like Starbucks offer packaged instant coffee. Many are certified for sustainability on environmental, social, and economic factors.
And if coffee itself is complex — with its different origins, varieties, processing methods, roasts, grinds, and preparations — instant adds another layer of complexity depending on whether it is made using spray-dry, freeze-dry, or other methods. New techniques include aroma recovery and the addition of micro-ground coffee powder that provides more of the flavors of fresh, ground coffee.
So how to talk to consumers about it all in a simple, clear way? And how to overcome perceptions that instant coffees are all the same, and not very good?
Those are questions that the world’s largest instant sector set out to answer in 2019, when the Brazilian Instant Coffee Industry Association, ABICS, together with the Campinas Institute of Food Technology, ITAL, began work on new protocols for evaluating and labelling products.
The project had two phases. First came research by expert cuppers to establish a framework for quality ratings that weighted flavor attributes according to how much they added to or reduced perceived quality. Second came trials of this framework using samples of instant coffee products.
The trials of samples confirmed validity of the framework, which provides a system that is both simpler and more descriptive than the SCA scale. It is simpler because it groups coffees into three broad categories of quality, to sidestep the subjective nature of Q-cupping: Conventional, Differentiated, and Excellent. (See table below.)
Yet it is also more informative because it talks about flavors. Rather than an integer, it relies on words, a “sensory lexicon” of descriptive labels that cover 15 major taste attributes: sweet, acidic, woody, floral, fruity, and so on. The system was announced in a white paper, “Quality Assessment of Instant Coffee: A Sensory Science Development,” unveiled at Brazil Coffee Week in November 2022, and available online at www.abics.com.br.
Why “attributes”? A flavor description lets consumers choose a coffee according to the taste they like, and the way they want to use it. Hot, with sugar and milk? Black in an iced drink? In a cocktail, energy shake, bakery product, sauce? In each case, different flavor characteristics might be sought, and a different quality level desired. The system should also be useful in helping consumers understand a product’s value proposition, as in the case of a premium-priced instant brand costing twice the level of a commercial-grade offering.
And it’s not just for consumers. The framework supports business, letting producers, brands, and retailers better assess and communicate about the products they work with. The protocols would help, for example, the maker of a new RTD coffee in England or Korea better source the right concentrate from producers throughout the world. Or in food service, a restaurateur could put three different instant coffees on a menu, listing each one by taste and priced by quality grade.
The taste descriptors were rated for correlation with perception of quality and each given a weighting to generate the quality score.
Desirable descriptors included sweetness, acidity, floral, fruity, herby, honey, nutty, chocolatey, and spicy, in order of weight. Negatively associated with quality were bitterness, over-extracted coffee flavor, woody, astringency, and aftertaste intensity. “Body” turned out to be difficult to differentiate between various instant products.
Samples are tested for each flavor attribute on a 0- to 5-point scale based on intensity of the attribute, ranging from “absence” to “very high.” For reference in calibrating the flavor attributes and intensity, the testers sample diluted solutions of substances like sucrose (sweetness) and caffeine (bitterness). And they memorize aromas using the olfactory vials of the Le Nez du Café test kit made by Éditions Jean Lenoir, as listed on page 10 in the “Sensory Lexicon” table.
What’s next?
The framework was developed using intensive tests by a special group of 15 expert cuppers, and then trialed by smaller groups of 6 or 7 tasters, as would be more practical in routine industry practice. The trials yielded a consistency of results that confirmed the overall validity of the methodology’s rationale and procedures. ABICS emphasizes that the system is designed to be objective regarding quality grades, since its primary tests confirmed a strong consensus among expert tasters on which flavor attributes are associated with quality.
There was a small anomaly, however. The trial phase delivered inconsistent quality grades for a few samples. The grades differed by only one step, not two. So, this issue needs further attention. ABICS suggests that results could be fine-tuned by doing more work to train and calibrate the tasters — and simply through practice in regular usage by companies.
One challenge: What if a coffee brand considers its instant product to belong to the “Excellent” or “Differentiated” quality grade but it gets rated a step lower? That’s an issue that may already exist in the coffee market. In Brazil, for example, roasted and ground coffee is covered by national Minimum Quality Brazilian Standards that group coffees into three grades: “Gourmet,” “Superior,” and “Traditional.” These standards inspired the instant grading system.
But the ABICS white paper did not address how a brand might dispute a rating. In any case, it seems likely that a standardized grading framework would put useful pressure on companies, resulting in a push to improve instant products to better ensure a good rating. In other words, it could support further development of soluble as a category, perhaps in a big way.
ABICS, founded in 1972, groups eight of Brazil’s biggest instant producers: Cacique, Cafe Camphino, Cocam, Iguacu, Nescafé, Ofi, and RealCafé. The organization will share its data and methodology with groups and companies around the world to promote adoption and elaboration. If the system becomes widely used in the industry, it could stimulate improvements in the development, production, trade, and marketing of soluble coffee. As for consumers, perhaps even fussy drinkers of specialty coffees would discover that some of today’s instant products meet their needs when they want a convenient and palatable cup? That would be one advantage of having a simple, clear way to shop.
