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  • History
    • Topic XII

    Caffeine and instant coffee

    The molecule that the coffee plant makes to defend itself, what it does to the human body, what epidemiology establishes and what it only associates, then the industry that has been turning coffee into powder since Chicago in 1901 and Orbe in 1938. The one that removes caffeine from the bean, born in Bremen in 1905, has its own plate. After Ukers (1922), Coste (1955), the collection Coffee and Caffeine Consumption for Human Health (Nutrients, 2020), the EFSA opinion (2015), IARC Monograph 116 (2016), professional training documents, the market reports of the ICO and Swiss Water (2025-2026), and the Livre café (ch. 19).

    A lithographed and hand-colored plate composed like a table of compartments. At the center, a whole young coffee plant set in an open landscape, and above it a detail of the branch in flower and fruit. All around, six framed vignettes captioned in English unfold the chain of coffee: picking on the plantation, separating bean from pulp, roasting over a brazier, grinding in a mill, two men seated face to face drinking, and a display of preparation utensils. Beneath the coffee plant, a row of beans seen from every angle and the unfolded flower.
    The coffee plant and the six uses of coffee, lithographed plateAuthor not identified in the record; hand-colored lithograph, circa 1840; Wellcome Collection, London, iconographic reference V0044750, circa 1840, Public domain (Public Domain Mark, declared in the Wellcome record)

    The 14 sections of this plate

    Each section has its own page. The first sentence says what you will find there.

    1. 01The moleculeCaffeine is 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine, formula C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, an alkaloid of the purine group, related to the theobromine of cocoa (dimethylxanthine) and the theophylline of tea.
    2. 02What it does for the plantThe coffee plant makes its caffeine in three successive methylations starting from xanthosine: xanthosine, 7-methylxanthosine, 7-methylxanthine, theobromine, caffeine.
    3. 03Levels: species, varieties, caffeine-free coffee plantsSome coffee plants do not make any. Coste places in the section Mascarocoffea eighteen Malagasy and Mascarene species devoid of caffeine; Ukers already cites in 1922 C. mauritiana at 0.07% and C. humboldtiana at zero, but with a bitter principle, cafamarine, which makes the brew undrinkable, and reports that Willcox, analyzing wild coffees of Madagascar, found none free of caffeine.
    4. 04What it does to the body: pharmacologyCaffeine is absorbed entirely by the digestive tract and reaches its blood peak in thirty to sixty minutes; tea releases the same molecule more slowly, which explains the different sensation at equal dose.
    5. 05The genetics of the responseThe CYP1A2 gene exists in several versions.
    6. 06How to read a coffee studyAlmost everything that circulates about coffee and health comes from observational studies: one records what tens or hundreds of thousands of people say they drink, follows what happens to them, and compares.
    7. 07Established, associated, unknown: organ by organHeart. The review inserted in the 2020 collection reports cardiovascular mortality reduced by about 19% in habitual consumers, with a maximum around three cups a day.
    8. 08Sleep, pregnancy, thresholdsSleep is the best-measured point of contact.
    9. 09How much is in the cupAll the values above are in milligrams, and all general-audience articles convert them into cups.
    10. 10Three beliefs from 1685, and a fourthDufour, in his Traitez nouveaux et curieux du café (1685), already answered the three questions that Europe was asking about coffee.
    11. 11DecafRemoving caffeine from the bean is an industry in its own right, born in Bremen in 1905.
    12. 12Instant coffee: from Kato to NescaféThe forerunners are extracts, that is, coffee already brewed, then reduced or mixed with a fat: not yet a powder.
    13. 13Making instant coffeeExtraction. The coffee goes in roasted fairly light and coarsely ground, to limit fines, those tiny particles that slow the flow.
    14. 14Today (2024-2026)Instant coffee. It is gaining ground, and it is gaining it against the current.

    Elsewhere on the site, the passages that deal with the same things as this page. Computed from the text, not picked by hand.

    CanephoraThe genome: diploid, allogamous, parent of arabicaBoth mention genes, genome and caffeine.DecafDecaf: from Bremen to SankaBoth mention benzene, caffeine and volatiles.The chronicleThe science, the burned stocks and the two warsBoth mention decaf, benzene and coffee.DecafThe other way: coffee plants that do not make itBoth mention caffeine, Laurina and charrieriana.The chronicleQuotas, instant coffee and the invention of qualityBoth mention coffee, volatiles and hot.DecafThe questions asked most oftenBoth mention decaf, caffeine and cups.
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