The forerunners are extracts, that is, coffee already brewed, then reduced or mixed with a fat: not yet a powder. John Dring patents in England in 1771 a “coffee compound” with butter and tallow. T & H Smith, in Scotland, reduces an infusion to a quarter of its volume in 1840. The Union army buys in 1861 an “essence” from H. A. Tilden.

The first real powder comes from New Zealand. David Strang, a spice merchant of Invercargill, dries it with hot air in 1889.

Ukers then tells the American sequel, which begins with a failure. The Japanese chemist Sartori Kato, of Tokyo, brings to Chicago around 1899 a soluble tea that does not sell. The attempt nevertheless leads him to produce, the same year, with merchants, an instant coffee. The Kato Coffee Co. sells it to the public at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901, supplies the Ziegler Arctic expedition with it, and Kato obtains the American patent on August 11, 1903.

The competitor arrives by another path. George Constant Louis Washington, born in Belgium to English parents and settled in Guatemala City, invents around 1906 a “refined” instant coffee. He puts it on the market in 1909 under the name Red E Coffee, then founds in 1910 the George Washington Coffee Refining Co., with a factory in Brooklyn. His process remains secret, never patented. His family doctor, F. Lehnhoff Wyld, nonetheless copies its principle in 1913 to launch Belna in Brussels.

The product did not convince the professionals. Ukers notes that some of the trade experts and connoisseurs remained skeptical: for them, instant coffee was a “will-o'-the-wisp”, impossible to make without destroying the aromatic principle. They had a technical reason to think so, and we will find it again below: an extract dried hot loses its volatiles.

Ukers 1922, ch. XXXI (pp. 517-540) and chronology pp. 725-737 (entries 1899, 1901, 1903, 1909); Works in Progress, A brief history of instant coffee

• It is war that imposes the product. According to E. F. Holbrook, head of the coffee section of the American quartermaster corps, the Germans' use of mustard gas made it “one of the most important articles of subsistence”: instant coffee is prepared without fire or pot in a trench. After trials in sticks, tablets and capsules, the army adopts the individual envelope
• one month before the armistice, the New York depot learns that from January 1, 1919 it will need 25,000 pounds a day in addition to the reserve rations, or 42,500 pounds daily
• the Washington factory in Brooklyn was reaching 37,000 pounds a day. I. D. Richheimer, promoter of the Kato patent, founds in 1918 the Soluble Coffee Co. of America for the army, then grants licenses
• Hamor and Trigg patent in 1919 a process that fixes the volatilized caffeol onto petroleum jelly to return it to the extract, exploited by King Coffee Products of Detroit under the name Minute Coffee. The quality remained mediocre: an extract dried hot loses its volatiles.

Ukers 1922, ch. XXXI (pp. 517-540) and chronology pp. 725-737 (entries 1918, 1919); Works in Progress, A brief history of instant coffee

The modern process comes from Brazilian overproduction. In 1929, the Banque française et italienne pour l'Amérique du Sud asks Louis Dapples, chairman of Nestlé, to find a use for Brazil's unsold stocks, those that would end up burned in the 1930s (see economics). The chemist Max Morgenthaler works from 1932 in Vevey and observes that the extract keeps its aroma better if mixed with carbohydrates before drying; he mixes the extract in roughly equal parts with dextrins or glucose and dries it by atomization. Nescafé is launched in Switzerland on April 1, 1938 from the Orbe factory, in the United Kingdom in June 1938, in the United States in 1939, in thirty countries in April 1940; a year's stock goes in two months. The Second World War repeats 1918: the American government classifies instant coffee as a “commodity vital to the war effort” in 1942, Nestlé opens two American factories in 1943 for the army, and more than 75% of world production is drunk in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. After the war, the Saint-Menet factory (Marseille) produces in 1952 the first instant coffee with no added carbohydrates; Borden in the United States develops a pure extract around 1950.

Nestlé, Nescafé 75 years, nestle.co.uk (2013); Works in Progress, A brief history of instant coffee; professional training document, Instant coffee: atomization and freeze-drying, p. 2, after the Syndicat français des fabricants de café soluble

Freeze-drying changes the product in the 1960s: Maxwell House (General Foods) launches the first freeze-dried instant coffee in 1963-1964, Nestlé answers with Nescafé Gold Blend in 1965. Comparative measurements give 77% of volatile compounds retained by freeze-drying against 57% by atomization. Agglomeration, which briefly rewets the atomized powder with steam to fuse it into granules, appears at the same time and gives the powder the look of ground coffee. In the 1990s Nestlé introduces a self-foaming solution for instant cappuccinos, Starbucks launches VIA in 2009 by mixing micro-grounds into the extract, and since 2016 subcontractors such as Swift Cup freeze-dry in small batches for specialty roasters. Nescafé today claims more than 5,500 cups per second in more than 180 countries.

Works in Progress, A brief history of instant coffee; Nestlé, Nescafé 75 years (2013); MadeHow, How instant coffee is made

• 1771Dring patent, England: first “coffee compound”.
• 1819-1820Runge isolates caffeine.
• 1889Strang, New Zealand: coffee powder dried with hot air.
• 1899-1903Kato in Chicago: instant coffee sold at Buffalo in 1901, patent 1903.
• 1903-1906Roselius in Bremen: benzene process, German patent 1905, Kaffee HAG.
• 1909G. Washington launches Red E Coffee; Roselius brings his decaf to the United States.
• 1918-1919Instant coffee enters the American ration: 42,500 pounds a day planned.
• 1923Sanka launched in New York; General Foods in 1932.
• 1938Nescafé, Orbe, April 1: industrial atomization.
• 1963-1965First freeze-dried instant coffees: Maxwell House, then Nescafé Gold.
• 1967-1970Zosel discovers then patents decaffeination with supercritical CO₂.
• 1975The NCI classifies trichloroethylene; the industry moves to methylene chloride.
• 1980-1988Swiss Water: Coffex commercializes the water process, Burnaby plant in 1988.
• 2008Coffea charrieriana, caffeine-free coffee plant from Cameroon, described.
• 2015-2016EFSA: 400 mg per day; IARC: coffee reclassified in group 3.
• 2024The EPA bans methylene chloride outside food uses; FDA petition under way.
• 2025Decaf drunk by 12% of Americans; instant coffee at 12.1% of world exports.