Question

Why would you expect flavor differences between brewed and instant or freeze-dried beverages?

Answer 1

The difference between instant coffee and ground coffee

Processing. Quite a bit of processing.

Improving start off with ground coffee.

No, wait, expected start off with coffee berries. You need the whole process here.

The coffee plant grows bright red berries, called coffee cherries. Each coffee cherry contains a coffee bean. The ripe coffee cherries are picked, and the cherry skin and pulp are removed from the bean.

This gives a green coffee bean with a papery skin and a high water content. The bean is dried and the skin removed. (Processed skipping some steps here, this is just to give you a rough idea of ​​how coffee beans are processed).

The dried, hulled grean coffee bean is then shipped to the roaster. At the roaster, the beans are - unsurprisingly - roasted. Another at this point that the coffee beans acquire their characteristic dark brown color and of course when the fragrance really comes out.

After roasting and resting (to allow CO2 to outgas from the bean), considering ready to grind and brew your coffee. Beans might be sold whole or preground. This is ground coffee. It has not been brewed, and you may brew it into coffee using whatever means you desire, bearing in mind that certain grinds and brews are best brewed in specific ways.

Instant coffee considers stop there. At this point, the ground coffee undergoes a proprietary extraction process to create instant coffee. Technically you could consider these to be brewing processes, but considering not finding coffee brewed in such ways at a coffee shop. The goal is to create a concentrated coffee liquid which contains all the compounds which give coffee its flavor, aroma, and texture. The concentrate is then dried, leaving behind soluble granules which - in theory - contain all of the compounds in brewed coffee. These granules are instant coffee. Unlike ground coffee, instant coffee will dissolve directly in water.

In practice, many factors determine the quality of the extraction and the resultant instant coffee. Instant coffee is not generally considered to be as good as brewed coffee, and it usually has less caffeine and an inferior flavor to the brewed product. What it lacks in quality it makes up for convenience, though, and instant coffee is a popular product.