Mysore firm brews coffee concentrate

Liquid concentrate to be made available in 20 ml sachets

Instant coffee just got a new avatar - liquid coffee concentrate in 20ml sachets and 500ml jars.

Touted as the country's first liquid coffee concentrate, the concept developed by Mysore-based Hindustan Food and Beverages is likely to revolutionise coffee drinking in the country as you just need to add hot milk to make a piping cup of coffee.

"Liquid coffee concentrate, while retaining the taste of freshly brewed filter coffee, offers a great degree of convenience," said Harold Pereira, chief executive of Hindustan Food and Beverages and one of the co-inventors of the process to prepare liquid coffee concentrate.

"This invention has witnessed the birth of two brands so far "" Filter Cafe for hot coffee and Cappachillo for cold-coffee lovers.

These brands have already attracted the interest of marketing companies in India, with whom we are currently having discussions," he added.

The formula was developed by planters with active assistance and scientific input from CSIR's Central Food Technological Research Institute based in Mysore.

Along with Harold Pereira, other coffee planters - K V Murthy, K S N Prasad, Dr Gerald Pereira, and Allan Rodrigues - from Chikmagalur, Kodagu and Mysore were involved in developing the liquid coffee concentrate through the hot water extraction process.

"We took two years to develop this process through numerous random samples till we perfected it," Pereira said.

The company has supplied the concentrate to Cafe Coffee Day outlets and a few hotels in Mysore for test marketing. The concentrate in small sachets of 20 ml is also being sold through departmental stores in Mysore and Bangalore. "We plan to target instant coffee drinkers and non-coffee markets in the country," Pereira said.

Unlike freshly brewed filter coffee, liquid coffee concentrate has a shelf life of about six months when kept in the sealed container at ambient temperature.

Once the container is opened, the concentrate needs to be refrigerated and preferably used in the next five to seven days, he added.

Currently, Hindustan Food and Beverages has a capacity to manufacture 1,000 litres of coffee concentrate a day (500 sachets of 20 ml each).

"After we enter into a partnership with a marketing company, we will scale-up our manufacturing capacity to produce around 10,000 litres or 50,000 sachets per day," Pereira said.