Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that doesn't suck

Re:Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that d... by sargun on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @06:49PM (#13935761)

So, I am curious -- A while ago I experimented with making a better instant coffee. I came up with a few different solutions. I'm curious as to whether you've looked into them:

1) Pouring a ristretto into liquid nitrogen. At reconstitution time, put into boiling water and stir. Issue: Cold coffee, potential colloid separation -- solutions might include some kind of stabilizer

2) Taking a ristretto and removing water content to concentrate it, and then pull a vacuum on it and package it. Said package can then be opened and dissolved in boiling water. Issue: Complexity. Removing the water can be complicated, pulling a vacuum on it, and then heating it while at vacuum is hard.

3) Coffee puck: Take traditional coffee, and put it into a permeable membrane that when exposed to water above a certain temperature is permeable. When that temperature drops, it stops being permeable. Problem: Said polymers were hard to find.

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Re:Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that d... by freese on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @07:50PM (#13936222)

1) You need to keep it frozen, right? That makes it a lot more complicated + probably issues with the colloids (we experienced that at one point)

2) The bigger challenge is actually brewing large amount of ristrettos/espressos, not necessarily concentrating it.

3) just sounds way too complicated to me to rival/equal soluble coffee

Edit: haven't really looked into any of these as a feasible option for us.

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Re:Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that d... by sargun on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @08:37PM (#13936504)

This might be a trade secret, but how are you keeping the colloid solution coherent?

I'm kinda surprised you say that brewing the ristrettos are the hard parts. I know that centrifugal brewing is all the rage these days (as siphon, pour-over, and espresso were before), but it seems like automating espresso is a solved problem. Are there no industrial-scale burr grinders?

I think the biggest problem would be tamping and getting that to be consistent.

Is there anyone who needs industrial scale espresso?

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Re:Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that d... by zloof on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:52PM (#13936850)

The part re: colloids is a trade secret at this point, but definitely a real challenge.

As far as we could find, there is no common solution for industrial scale espresso. If someone has one, please post it here. This was a personal obsession of mine last spring - "How does this not exist?!?"

Kalle is the coffee expert, but as the 'non-coffee guy', I have no idea why this wouldn't exist - I would have thought someone out there would need it?

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Re:Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that d... by bowmessage on Thursday March 23, 2017 @01:02AM (#13937498)

industrial scale espresso: what about those automatic espresso machines you can sometimes find in office buildings? they pull single, double, or triple espresso shots from a touch screen interface. Can do lattes etc. too, but assuming you wouldn't need that part.

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Re:Launch HN: Sudden Coffee (YC W17) – Instant coffee that d... by sargun on Thursday March 23, 2017 @06:19AM (#13938564)

They're called super automatics. Generally, they're really expensive, and they make coffee very slowly (.5ml/second if you're lucky). They also tend to be built by companies who don't readily provide documentation on how to fix / modify them.

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