State-of-the-Art Instant Tea

By Dan Bolton

HATTON, Sri Lanka

In consumer surveys, instant tea remains the laggard.

Darlings of the resurgence include green tea. White tea. Specialty teas. Many orthodox and blends show well but manufacturers of instant tea have been slow to innovate.

Mintel International reports that British tea drinkers, aged 25-34 are the most likely to drink every variety of tea tracked by Mintel. Three in four (74%) drink conventional black tea and 52% drink green. Half prefer fruit and herbals (51%) and half (50%) drink specialty black ― one of the surprising findings in the 2016 survey is that 34% of young tea drinkers drink instant tea. This is double the number for British tea drinkers: only one in five (17%) drink instant.

Mintel food and drink analyst Anita Winther explains, “Consumers aged 25-34 have the widest repertoire of tea, which is reflective of this age group typically having a more adventurous attitude towards food and drink, with a greater tendency to seek out new foods and flavors to try.”

ALSO: Instant Coffee Gains Against Ground

“Almost one in five (18%) of those aged between 16 and 44 who drink tea and hot drinks would be interested in trying tea crystals, compared to 6% aged 55+. Meanwhile, 10% of those aged under 45 would be interested in trying liquid instant tea concentrate, compared to 6% of those aged 55+,” writes Winther.

Curiosity and convenience are key to their interest. Unlike their parents, the younger generation is turning away from the traditional cup and keen to see more of an experimental approach to tea.

Preserving the natural flavor of tea

Sri Lanka’s A7, the undulating and winding road that crosses the heart of Nuwara Eliya, a famous tea producing region, leads to Blinkbonnie a hillside factory quite unlike the 700 processing facilities on this island of tea.

Hayleys Global Beverage chose Hatton for its proximity to company-owned gardens that date to 1878. The Hayleys Group annually grows 15 million kilos of tea on 36 gardens, and exports 4.5% of Sri Lanka’s tea, most of which is destined for teabags and tins.

Engineers and researchers here at the Hatton factory have discovered a way to capture the very essence of tea used to produce concentrates, extracts, instant granules, and tea powders.

Instant tea is popular, convenient, inexpensive, but often criticized for processing that sacrifices the delicacy of aroma that emanates from volatile compounds.

 Instant tea was developed in the 1930s, with Nestlé introducing the first commercially successful product in 1946. Nestea was popular and profitable as factories extracted the liquor from what was usually off grade black teas. Greens were later added to improve color and as a clarifying agent to prevent clouding. The extract was then concentrated under low pressure and dried to a powder as a fine spray, free-dried, or vacuum-dried to crystals. The initial extraction was done at low temperatures to preserve some of the tea’s aromatic components resulting in instant that lacked body and seemed flavorless.

Flavor is very dependent on smell (typically accounting for 75 to 90% of the sensory experience) and the pleasantly aromatic molecules in good tea simply were not there to smell.

Deputy general managers Akila Dalpathadu, compliance & process development, and Susantha Marasinghe, engineering, while leading a tour explained in detail a process that transforms bulky leaves into flavorful premium quality powders infused with aqueous tea aroma.

“This is the new frontier of Ceylon tea,” says Marasinghe. Visitors to the facility are sanitized, as in passing through a chamber that rids their clothing of dust and foreign particles.

At the onset, the very essence of the tea is coaxed from leaves using a state-of-the-art Australian Flavourtech spinning cone column (SCC). The device extracts and recovers volatile compounds in 25 seconds through a gentle steam stripping process. A tea slurry enters the two-story-tall stainless steel chamber under vacuum. It flows as a thin film down the upper surface of the first stationary cone then drains through an outlet to the base of a vaned spinning cone immediately below. Centrifugal force forces the liquid to flow upward as the vapor rises, concentrating the flavor without chemical extraction.

The relative proportion of volatiles in the aqueous aroma can be controlled. Hayleys sells the liquid concentrate and uses it to enhance the flavor of its powdered teas while maintaining its natural characteristics.

Cold steep process

Jim Lamancusa, founder of Cusa Tea in Boulder, Colorado (www.cusatea.com) patented a process that also begins with a slurry, but in this instance the organic tea is combined with fruit.

“We put them into room temperature water and pressurize the water to around 500 psi,” Lamancusa explains. “This encourages the tea and fruit to steep at a water temperature that it normally wouldn’t want to. We continuously test the tea and typically after around 8 hours, it has steeped to perfection.”

“We don’t need to add any flavorings, aromas, or colors because the product is essentially steeped and complete.  We then strain out the tea and fruit to prevent it from over-steeping.  Once we have the tea liquid, we move it into a vacuum dehydrator that slowly removes the H2O from the tea over the course of 14 hours. 

This is the perfect process for dehydration because it avoids the high heat used in spray drying instant teas or the extreme cold used in freeze drying.  Vacuum dehydration gently removes the water and reduces the tea to a fine powder or crystals, he said.

“The tea is so starved for moisture that it instantly rehydrates when mixed into water,” he says.

Instant opportunity

Tea drinkers accustomed to varying temperature, steep time, and leaf quantity have no control when it comes to instant.

Manufacturers that begin with high-quality tea, perfect the extraction, retain the aroma and package the tea to prevent staling will be rewarded for their efforts – especially by young tea drinkers who see convenience as paramount. Soluble coffee recently experienced its breakthrough. The global market for instant coffee is growing at 4.8% per year and is expected to reach $42.5 billion by 2025, according to Transparency Market Research.

Sales across the segment are up after slumping for decades thanks to innovative products like Starbucks VIA. The combination of micro-ground roast coffee and soluble coffee generates praise and profits. Sales topped $100 million in the first 10 months following its introduction in 2010 later rising to $1 billion. Tea is poised to do the same.