Until now, quality coffee at home has always meant freshly bought and self-ground beans and expensive/complex machinery.
For the last six years, we've been delivering delicious coffee, responsibly, in pods, but simply having a Nespresso® machine has limited our community and the conversation we think is valuable to creating a healthier planet.
Conscious of this limitation, we had a crazy idea to try and make a coffee product that tasted like specialty coffee without needing the fancy machinery; requiring only hot water. This would mean that any Aussie with a kettle could enjoy quality coffee.
We started by understanding how instant coffee was made and quickly realised it was aimed at delivering the crappiest cup of coffee at the cheapest price to make big corporations the most money. This race to the bottom is not only bad for the customer but it's devastating to the coffee growers and the environment, forcing mass mono-cropping (which requires heavy use of pesticides and land degradation).
This was our opportunity. This quest has resulted in what we're offering today: The Three Capes Blend, a specialty coffee that's as easy to brew as instant coffee but tastes like a delicious filter brew.
Read the story of the name Three Capes
Here's a little breakdown of how our 'Just Add Water' coffee is made:
1. We start with Specialty-Grade coffee beans from small farms, officially graded and cupped for flavour, versus commodity-grade mass farm grown beans
2. We "extract" the perfect amount of liquid from the beans. This step is actually brewing the coffee, running hot water through the beans to make the coffee liquid. It's like a big filter brew. The big companies extract as much from the beans as possible, resulting in the most coffee liquid, resulting in an overly bitter tasting end result.
3. We then freeze dry and powder grind the coffee liquid. Freeze drying is a tried and true foodie technique to lock-in flavours and preserve food for a long time. This is in contrast to big companies "spray-drying" which is an elaborate, typically chemical induced, process that involves spraying the coffee through intense heat. This head crystalises the liquid and gives you the familiar instant granules.
