Coffea arabica / Coffea robusta?

For the past seven years I've breakfasted on coffee nearly every morning. There's nothing like stumbling softly around the kitchen, scalding the pot, feeling the intense cold of the container from the freezer (I freeze my coffeegrounds; the infusion isn't affected and the grounds don't lose their aromatic oil to evaporation when you store them this way), and standing around waiting, almost in desperation, until you hear the schchchchchchlllup as you pour. Even then, it is far too hot to drink, but you try anyway. I have often come within a yelp or two of scalding my tongue in this way. But it always seems worth it.

I was sitting here a few minutes ago with a freshly-brewed cafetiere of the good stuff steaming gently beside me when I read with horror that 81% of British people class themselves as coffee-drinkers, and yet 44% have never had ground coffee. The difference between instant and ground is not simply one of olfactory prudery. It's the way the beans are grown; harvested; roasted; dried; ground; packaged - and the way the result is prepared, either by Joe Public or a trained barista. (And even the baristas sometimes aren't much good.)

And then you get to the taste. While it's true that Robusta beans are often used as the raw material for instant 'coffee', and Arabica beans for ground, it's not true that there's necessarily a difference of quality between the beans themselves. The taste of any decently-prepared cup of ground coffee is much more complex, well-rounded, subtle and rich than any instant. Of that I am certain. I live on the stuff, for god's sake. :o)

But why instant? In 1901, instant coffee was invented by Japanese-American chemist Satori Kato of Chicago. In 1906, English chemist George Constant Washington invented the first mass-produced version. (The guilty party was of course English. I knew it.) But WHY?!

I have a feeling that this man was, like so many in society, driven by speed, and this notion of speed and quickness ruled. If he could make coffee in 3 seconds rather than 7 minutes, that was priority number one. During the process of perfecting this travesty he did what he could to keep the flavour half-decent, but it was never going to be enough. And it still isn't. But loads of us seem to think that we're never going to be fast enough. And we still aren't.

Maybe that's because we never will be, though. And that's why, every morning, I blearily reach for the coffeegrounds instead of the instant. Ahhhh. :o)