Let’s be honest – instant coffee doesn’t taste good. No matter how gourmet it is, it always tastes inferior to coffee brewed from ground beans at home or in a coffee shop. There’s a reason for that.
Historically, instant coffee has been made using extremely harsh processes that destroy the flavor, aroma, and taste of coffee. That’s why all other instant coffees have that burned, bitter and acidic taste, no matter how high-quality the beans are to begin with.
What do you get when you mix amazing coffee beans with revolutionary botanical extraction technology? You get one of the best cups of coffee you’ve ever had!
Hi everyone! My name is Jim Lamancusa, the founder and CEO of Cusa Coffee and Tea. I developed the world’s first cold-brew instant coffee because I wanted to create an instant coffee that doesn’t taste burnt, bitter or acidic, but rather as smooth as a fresh cup of gourmet coffee. The best part? My instant coffee mixes beautifully with water of any temperature – hot or iced water.
Before I tell you how I did it, let me tell you why. Let’s take a step back to 2015.
I was on a backpacking trip in 2015 when I noticed that all my friends were breaking out Starbucks Via instant coffee packets. As much as I loved coffee, it gave me acid reflux, so I always opted for tea at the time. I had developed a love of tea from my time living in Asia about 15 years ago.
There I was, attentively steeping my tea, utterly amazed at the ease with which they ripped open sticks of powdered coffee and made steaming cups of morning Jo in seconds. I also had to pack out wet, soggy tea bags after I was done with them (pack it in, pack it out!). One day during the trip, a bag of used tea bags burst in my backpack and got all over my clothes, and I thought, “Why hasn’t anyone made an instant tea that actually tastes good?”
From that light-bulb moment, I set out to create a brand new product: an instant tea that I, a tea fanatic, would actually want to drink on a daily basis. Something like Starbucks Via, but for tea drinkers.
My goal was to make the best cup of instant tea I’ve ever tasted. I started with all the existing methods for dehydrating beverages: spray drying, which relies on a 1,000-degree high-heat air fan, and freeze drying, which dehydrates food and beverages with extremely low temperatures around -112 degree.
Both of these technologies destroy the flavor, aroma, and beneficial qualities of the just about any beverage that is dehydrated with them. In the case of tea, manufacturers make up for that by adding sugar, preservatives, artificial flavorings and additives. Seriously, spend some time looking at the ingredients for instant beverages next time you’re in the store. They’re full of junk!
I didn’t want any of that in my product, so I nearly gave up. And then, one night, I picked up my wife’s rose extract eye cream.
Every night my wife puts on a rose extract eye cream that smells amazing but doesn’t contain any perfumes. Wondering how her eye cream manufacturer achieved that, I started researching botanical extraction technology. I realized that it could work extremely well for tea, and coffee too.
After months of trial and error, Cusa Tea was born. Three years later, we have 30 patents on our one-of-a-kind gentle evaporative dehydration process, have won four medals from the Global Tea Championship, and are one of the fastest growing CPG food brands in the country. With a strong (and rapidly growing) e-comm business, we are also sold on Amazon and in 2,500 points of retail distribution.
After countless customers asked us to make a coffee, we set out to do just that. We wondered since day one what coffee would taste like using the new process I developed, and several months ago we finally gave it a try.
It turns out Cusa Coffee is one of the smoothest cups of coffee you’ll ever have. It has no burnt or bitter taste. In fact, it doesn’t give me acid reflux at all, meaning I can drink coffee again! It is instant coffee that tastes better than any instant coffee on the market, and I would put it up against your premium or pour-over coffee too.
We start by cold brewing the coffee, under pressure, for 6-8 hours. Then we use a vacuum dehydrator, which gently removes the water from the coffee. We fill the machine halfway up with coffee and then put zero percent humidity air above it. The water from the coffee gently evaporates, but that’s all that’s evaporating.
All of the flavor and aroma stay within the coffee crystals. When you add hot or cold water back to it, you get an incredible cup of coffee that will rival any pour over or premium coffee that you’ve ever had. But don’t just take my word for it. We’ve sampled our first test batches and have received comments like:
Yes! We call it Cold-Brew instant coffee because of the way we brew and dehydrate it. But you can add it to Hot or Cold water.
Making good coffee isn’t enough. Just like we carefully source top-5% quality organic green and black teas to make Cusa Tea, I searched high and low for a great source of beans. We source all of Cusa Coffee from a fully regenerative-agriculture Rainforest Alliance coffee plantation, using high-elevation Arabica beans.
You can really taste the quality of ingredients it with the final product. That’s because you can actually taste the coffee!
We all know there are times in our lives that having a good cup of coffee conveniently is not possible. With Cusa Tea and Coffee, I am out to solve that problem. You can say goodbye to horrible office, airline and hotel coffee, and even replace those wasteful K Cups – those machines can be full of bacteria and mold anyway!
The best part about Cusa Coffee is that you don’t need hot water to dissolve it! That means you can make iced coffee with iced water, making an already convenient beverage even easier to make.
Making a cup of amazing coffee is now as easy as Rip, Pour, Sip, and Go!
Wow, we have already hit our funding goal, in the first 12 hours! I am posting this update to add two stretch goals. I have developed two other flavors and they are delicious! If we hit $20,000, I will add Vanilla Dark Roast as a flavor choice option. If we hit $30,000, I will add Lemon Dark Roast.
I need your help to make this vision a reality. Your support will mean that I can bring the next generation of coffee to life! You’ll always be able to say you help bring out an end to the time when burnt, bitter and acidic instant coffee was the only option.
Thank you in advance and I can’t wait to share with you how amazing this coffee is!
This is the first time we have run a large batch of Cusa Coffee with our process. We have been producing Cusa Tea for 3 years, but coffee has a different cold-brew timing, as well as a different amount of time to allow the evaporative dehydration to finish. So, even though we have done over a dozen small batches, we are expecting to have some new learnings as we do our first large batch. As well, with the ongoing uncertainty around Coronavirus, there is a chance that USPS, FedEx and UPS deliveries could be delayed. I promise that you will be the first to know if any of these delays happen, and that when regular shipping is reinstated, you will get the reward you commit to. However, such delays of essential services are not expect at this time. I will be monitoring this Kickstarter daily, if not hourly, and will be around to answer any questions or concerns!