Original subtitles

[Gregg Wallace] Coffee.

Every year, we grind our way through more than 200

million kilos of the stuff.

Together, we get through 55 million cups a day.

Tonight, we are going to reveal the astonishing process

that turns green beans--

Into instant coffee.

Quenching our first is clearly a big job.

This enormous factory is almost half a mile across.

I'm Gregg Wallace.

I love this stuff.

And I'm chilling out, discovering the secrets

of freeze drying coffee--

It's, like, part adventurous and part very scary.

- -and finding out how they get that freshly brewed aroma--

I recognize that.

- -in every cup.

It does seem strange.

You have to take the smell out and put it back in again.

[sighs] I'm Cherry Healey.

So this is my brain.

I'm going cold turkey on caffeine--

I'm so sleepy.

It's half past 8:00.

- -and exploring the future of the coffee plant.

It's not good news, I'm afraid.

In many cases, we've seen arabica dying in Ethiopia.

[Gregg] And historian Ruth Goodman goes back in time --

Ugh! That's foul.

[Gregg] --and lifts the lid on the world's

first instant coffee.

It looks rather like axle grease.

Tonight, we spill the beans on how

this factory makes 175,000 jars of instant coffee

every 24 hours.

Cheers!

Welcome to "Inside the Factory."

[theme music]

[music playing]

This is the Nestle factory in South Derbyshire.

890 people work here, making instant coffee and coffee pods.

Tonight, we're following the production

of freeze-dried instant coffee.

It all starts with a delivery of coffee beans.

Overseeing this morning's shipment is Robbie Hickinson.

Robbie, thank you very much for showing me around.

It's no problem.

So this is where it all starts, right?

[Robie] This is green bean reception.

How many beans on that truck?

27 tons of arabicas from Brazil.

If that's arabica, how many types are there?

Two-- robustas and arabicas.

And we have to use both sorts.

One gives it the body.

And the other one gives it the fruitiness.

But right now, we've got to unload 27 tons

of these from South America.

[music playing]

The truck is connected up.

And unloading begins.

The countdown from beans to jars starts now.

It'll take two hours for this lot to pour into the factory.

[beeping]

When you say "green beans," I think about my dinner.

Can I have a look?

They are not green.

They are gray.

Next, you're going to be telling me they're not really beans.

- Not really, no. - They're not, are they?

- No. - [laughing]

Not really.

It's what we call them.

What they actually are, they're the seed of a coffee cherry.

[latin music]

[Gregg] And guess what.

They're not even cherries.

The bright red fruit of the coffee plant

looks like a cherry when it's ripe and ready for harvesting.

Inside each fruit are two seeds.

These are the green coffee beans.

So how many tons will come through

here in the course of a day?

Between 25 and 100 tons a day, 450 tons a week.

[Gregg] That's five deliveries of beans from all over the world

arriving here every day.

27 tons of this unloading.

What exactly are you pouring into?

Well, we have a receiving hopper that's got a mesh

that takes out any big things.

Then to go through a cleaner where

we take out smaller cartons.

[Gregg] Do you get much debris in there?

We get quite a bit, yeah.

Anything unusual?

We've had iguana.

We had a live iguana.

And that ended up at Twycross Zoo.

We've had flip-flops, bullets, knives, money.

[Gregg] [laughing]

No gold, though.

[Gregg] This morning's delivery has been sieved and cleaned

to remove any odd additions.

Thankfully, no iguanas today.

The average coffee bean weighs less than a fifth of a gram.

So they're easily blown around the factory

using compressed air.

Our beans have made their way to the roasting area,

where Robbie's waiting for me under 15-meter high silos.

They are ginormous-- absolutely ginormous.

How much does each silo weigh?

[Robbie] 27 tons.

And how many silos?

Eight.

[Gregg] That's over 200 tons of beans.

[Robbie] That's right, about 216 tons.

Normal production, how long would that last you?

Two to three days.

You're kidding me.

No, no.

Roast a lot of coffee.

How many jars of coffee are we going to make today?

175,000 jars.

[Gregg] That's enough to supply all of Manchester for a month.

So what we're doing now, we're going to weigh

out a batch of 420 kilos.

So what do we do, just open one of those hoppers

and drag down some beans?

[Robbie] No, we'll take from five different silos--

[Gregg] Ooh--

- -because it's a five-bean blend.

And each silo's got a different bean in it?

It's got a different grade of bean.

[Gregg] Every bean that enters the factory is given

a grade according to quality.

Our instant coffee needs five different beans.

They fall from the silos into this giant hopper,

which weighs out 420 kilos.

Should we have a cup of tea before we go?

Or do we get sacked if we have a cup of tea?

The beans are blown 11 meters up to the top of the room

to be prepared for roasting.

If heated too quickly, compounds in the beans

will burn and ruin the flavor.

So they're pre-warmed to 60 degrees C. After 10 minutes,

they drop down a floor into the roaster.

They're moving around.

That's like a washing machine.

That reminds me of when I used to go to the laundrette

when I was a kid with my mum.

You don't come out very clean in here.

You've got this stream of air coming in at the bottom

of the roaster.

And because of the shape of the roaster,

the beans move up in the air stream

and then drop back to the bottom and keep rotating.

Why do you need to move them around?

It gives us a more uniform color, more even roast.

[Gregg] Our coffee will be a medium roast.

It's popular with consumers and works with or without milk.

How long are they in there for?

[Robbie] 10 minutes.

I can feel that extraordinary heat from here.

- [Robbie] Yes. - Wonderful.

Right, they are now brown.

They've gone from that gray color to something

I would recognize as a coffee bean.

That's brown.

It's a roast coffee, yeah.

What happens to them after 10 minutes?

We drop them into the cooler.

Because they come out of here red hot, right?

Red hot.

Let's go and have a look, shall we?

OK.

[Gregg] The beans drop out of the roaster

and down another floor

using only the force of gravity.

It's another washing machine.

[Robbie] This is the cooler.

So it comes down into that at 230 degrees.

Yeah.

And that's moving around because of air,

the same as the one above.

Exactly the same.

And what temperature do you want to get it down to?

40 degrees.

Why do you have to cool it?

Well, if you discharge it when it's still hot,

you've got the chance of exothermic reaction

in the silos.

What?

Exothermic reactions, where the self-heating of the beans,

they keep on roasting.

Ah.

In the end, you could end up with a fire

if they get too hot.

Ah, when you take something out of the oven,

people don't realize, it's still going to cook.

It still keeps cooking.

Residual heat.

Yeah.

[Gregg] And now what's going to happen to them when they

get to the right temperature?

They go to grinding.

[Gregg] Right, that's what I want to see.

I'm following the beans to the grinding department

just next door, where I'm meeting process

specialist, Katie Perry.

Katie, I'm Gregg.

What are you now doing with the roasted beans?

So the roasted beans are fed into this grinder.

And within the grinder, we have layers of rollers.

So as we move down the grinder, the rollers

are getting closer together to grind the bean into a finer

and finer particle.

So these are the roast beans.

Now that, finally, looks like a coffee bean.

Wah!

That'll wake you up in the morning.

So this is a sample partway through our grinder.

The smell's getting stronger.

But that-- yeah, that's becoming a coarse dust,

a dust with crispy bits in it.

Yeah.

And then our final sample.

This shows you our final grind.

So this is the fine particles of the coffee beans.

And how long does it take?

This grinder will take about 1,500

kilos of beans every hour.

Crying out loud.

Can I watch the next stage please?

Yes, follow me.

[Gregg] Roasted and ground--

we're well on the way to putting coffee in somebody's cup.

[whirring, clanking]

[beeping]

[Gregg] In the two hours and 38 minutes since our beans

arrived, my coffee's been ground and sent

to a high-security area of the factory.

Where are we?

What is this?

So here, Gregg, we're in our extraction area.

But this is our top-secret area.

So we can't actually show you any of the technology

that we have just behind the camera.

But we'll be able to explain it to you.

[Gregg] As soon as coffee beans are ground,

they release that strong coffee aroma we all know and love.

To make sure it doesn't disappear into thin air,

it's collected using a clever scientific process.

Nitrogen gas is pumped through the ground coffee,

capturing the aroma as it passes through.

The vapor is stored in a tank for later.

While the ground coffee gets brewed up in a super-sized

cafetiére called a pod.

I reckon, out of this, we could get five cups.

Yeah.

How many do you get out of your enormous one?

So each extraction pod that we have would

give us 250,000 cups of coffee.

Crying out loud.

Where are we going to get the biscuits for that?

[laughs]

Now, if I make a cafetiére, I'm left with bits.

Yes.

All right, now, some people throw them in the bin.

Other people throw them in the garden.

What do you do with tons and tons of coffee bits?

So all those coffee bits that are left over

are called our spent coffee grounds.

We keep them, squeeze all the water out of them,

and then burn them in our boilers to power the factory.

Those coffee grounds produce the same amount of energy as coal.

So if I stored up all my leftover coffee,

I could put it in my log burner?

Absolutely.

Would it really work?

Yeah.

You have extracted the aroma.

Yes.

I know what you do with the bits that are left over.

What do you now do with the liquid?

So this liquid would go to evaporation process.

Brilliant. Show me.

So far, we've made coffee as I would at home.

But this is where things change.

Next, this liquid has to be transformed into dry granules.

[chuckles] Right.

Where have you poured the enormous pot of coffee?

So all that coffee extract is now in our evaporator.

[Gregg] An evaporator?

[Katie] Yes.

[Gregg] That looks like it's going to the floor above.

How high is that?

So this evaporator actually goes up all six floors of

the building that we're in now.

[Gregg] Get out of here.

Really?

No way!

The whole building?

[Katie] The whole building.

[Gregg] How much coffee is above me?

[Katie] So at the moment, you have about 1 million cups

of coffee above you.

If one of those bursts, you and I

would melt like sugar cubes.

Every hour, 30,000 liters of coffee

travels through heated pipes inside the tower.

Warmed to 70 degrees C, the water

evaporates and is siphoned off.

So you are reducing your coffee in the same way

that I would produce a stock at home.

Absolutely.

I'd have it in a pot.

And the more I heated it, you would

reduce the amount of liquid.

But you would concentrate the flavor.

Yes.

That's a stock or a sauce.

That's what you're doing with the coffee, am I right?

Absolutely.

[Gregg] The liquid is reduced by 50%,

creating a thick coffee extract.

If you didn't concentrate it, would that mean, at home,

I would need loads and loads of spoonfuls of coffee?

Would I end up bringing home a jar as big as me?

Well, not quite.

If we didn't remove the water from it,

then we wouldn't be able to freeze dry it.

Oh.

Oh, OK.

I just thought it'd be much weaker.

[laughing]

8 hours and 23 minutes in, and we

have a 25-meter-high tower full of hot, highly

concentrated coffee.

Now, that would give you a kick.

The average cup of instant coffee contains 100 milligrams

of caffeine, helping us to get up and get out

of the house in the morning.

My mate, Cherry, has been having a go at giving it up.

[Cherry] I love my morning coffee.

But for the next five days, I've agreed

to go cold turkey as part of a scientific experiment.

Before I give up, I want to understand what caffeine

does to my body and brain.

So I'm heading to the University of Bristol

to meet Professor Peter Rodgers and a pineapple.

Peter, are we having a '70s drinks party?

No, no.

This is to show you how caffeine works on your brain.

Caffeine is a psychoactive drug in coffee,

tea, Cola, and other things.

Caffeine is a drug?

Yes, well, it has psychostimulant effects.

So this is my brain?

Well, no, actually, this represents

a cell in your brain.

And these are receptors.

They're called adenosine receptors.

OK.

A molecule called adenosine attaches itself to those cells.

[Cherry] Adenosine makes us feel sleepy.

And what caffeine can do is attach itself

to the adenosine receptor.

It fits on the receptor like this.

So what happens then when adenosine comes along?

It can't attach itself to the ones

that are occupied by caffeine.

Oh, I see.

So they take up the seats?

Yes.

Which means you're less tired?

It does.

[Katie] But the alertness created by caffeine

isn't permanent.

The body is, in a sense, very clever.

When it's exposed regularly to caffeine, it adapts.

So the receptors become more sensitive.

Or there are more of them.

What the body's trying to do is function normally--

Oh.

- -despite the caffeine being around.

The more you have, the more you need.

Yes, as a typical thing that happens with drugs.

You become tolerant.

The other effect is that if you now stop taking the drug,

you're going to feel pretty bad.

What you get is what's called a drug-opposite effect.

So in other words, rather than being more alert,

you're now actually sleepy and fatigued and tired.

So that's a big downside.

[Katie] With Peter's warnings ringing in my ears,

I nervously embark on the experiment.

It's day one.

I'm allowed caffeine today.

I'm savoring every last drop.

So it's day two.

It's a non-caffeine day.

I got a nice cup of mint tea.

Look at that, ay.

I'm monitoring my blood pressure, tracking my activity,

and recording my mood.

Day three.

I feel rubbish today.

Really can't be bothered with anything.

[sniffs]

[sighs]

After five days, I've recaffeinated.

And I'm ready to face my test results.

OK, woo hoo.

So, Cherry, how did you find it?

Not good.

- Really? - Really, really bad.

OK, well, that's caffeine cold turkey for you.

Some people even describe it like having flu-like symptoms.

What I want to know is do the numbers

reflect the drama of the week.

So these first results are from the alertness ratings

you made.

On the Monday, you're less than 40

on this scan in terms of alertness.

[Katie] Yes.

When you're withdrawn from caffeine on Tuesday,

Wednesday, and Thursday--

[Katie] Ooh.

- -you're even less alert.

I'm knackered.

I want to get back into bed.

Normally really full of beans, literally.

I can't be the caffeine.

Without caffeine, more adenosine jumped onto my receptors,

reducing my alertness.

Now, headache is another symptom of caffeine withdrawal.

Thursday, boom, there it was right--

right in the middle.

And now I've got the headache-- the caffeine headache.

I've taken a couple of painkillers.

It doesn't work.

So what caffeine normally does is restrict

blood flow to the brain.

But then when you withdraw caffeine,

you get an increase above normal of blood flow to the brain.

And actually, oddly enough, that's

what gives you the headache.

[Katie] But it's not all bad news.

Results show I slept earlier and for longer

on non-caffeine days.

I'm so sleepy.

It's half past 8:00.

Am I not better just kicking the habit completely?

Well, you could do that.

Or you could keep it in reserve.

So rather than using it as I do now, which is just to get

through the day, using it as a backup for when I really,

really need that extra kick.

Yes.

And there's also some potentially good news.

There is evidence of a link between a lower risk

of Parkinson's disease, type 2 diabetes,

dementia, even depression amongst

people who drink more coffee.

[Katie] These health benefits have not yet been proven.

And you shouldn't change your coffee habits on this basis.

But I'll certainly be more canny about how I

consume caffeine in the future.

[Gregg] At the factory, our hot, concentrated coffee

is being pumped to the freezing department,

where the liquid will become solid coffee granules.

In charge is Mike Dale.

Mike.

Gregg, pleased to meet you.

Now what?

This is where we pre-chill our coffee before

it goes into the cold room.

And these heat exchanges here are the same as you would

find in an ice cream factory.

I love coffee ice cream.

Am I able to taste that?

Of course, if you wish.

[Gregg] At minus 6 degrees C, it's more like syrup

than ice cream.

Agh!

Well, you said ice cream.

That is just strong and bitter.

- Yes. - You're a nice fellow.

But I'm going to find it hard to trust you from now on.

[laughter]

The coffee's now the correct texture

to head into the freezer.

What temperature is the freezer?

- [Mike] The freezer's between - 40 and -50 degrees.

Are people allowed in there?

Oh, yes.

- Could I go in there? - We can.

But we need to dress for the occasion.

[dramatic music]

This doesn't feel anywhere near cold enough.

This isn't -40.

This is actually our pre-cool room.

So what we have is a freezing belt here.

And that is what we freeze the coffee on.

[Gregg] The syrupy coffee is poured onto this conveyor belt

and disappears into the freezer.

We are going to follow it in.

What we need to do is cover our face.

And I would recommend removing your glasses.

Will they freeze?

They will freeze in there, yes.

[chuckles] OK.

It's, like, part adventurous and part very scary.

Are you ready?

[music playing]

[Gregg] This is the coldest place I've ever been.

The temperature is lower than at the North Pole.

And the noise is deafening.

As the liquid coffee travels along the conveyor belt,

it's blasted with chilly air from above and below.

It takes just 2 minutes to solidify,

turning it into a solid 8-millimeter-thick sheet

of frozen coffee.

This feeds into a chipper, which smashes

it into icy granules, each just 2 to 3 millimeters in size.

Whoa!

That is frightening.

That is painful.

That's not like anything on Earth.

And this is the result. You have frozen coffee.

That's off the belt. That is just

before it goes into the breaker and then

into the chipper and grinder.

You know what?

I think of myself as possibly a bit silly because you

hear the term "freeze dried."

But you don't ever really consider what that means.

And at the moment, we're only freezing.

We're not drying yet.

That's the next step.

[Gregg] In the last 8 hours and 37 minutes,

green beans have been transformed

into frozen granules.

Despite all these mind-blowing processes,

instant coffee is a convenient and quick way

of getting a brew in your mug.

But when and why was it invented?

[historic music]

Traditionally, making a cup of coffee takes time.

And if you have the time, well, that's all good.

[boom, horses whinny]

But historically, there have been places where

it wasn't safe to brew up.

On the fields of the American Civil War in the 1860s,

soldiers needed a quicker, more convenient caffeine hit.

So the Union Army tested a new coffee essence, which was beans

roasted and ground mixed with milk and sugar,

and the whole lot condensed down into something that

looks rather like axle grease.

We follow the original recipe so I can try it.

Soldiers would just add boiling water to make

a sort of instant coffee.

Ugh.

And it wasn't just Americans who relied on coffee.

It was also a popular choice for us tea-drinking Brits.

Our version of instant coffee was a liquid called Camp,

invented in 1876 and packed off in kit

bags in the First World War.

[boom]

Historian Taff Gillingham wants to show me the authentic trench

coffee experience.

Hi, Taff.

Hi, nice to see you.

Take me through the gates of hell.

- Come on. - Certainly, follow me.

It's not actually that bad.

- You reckon? - Yeah.

OK, let's see.

Or at least not if you were living in conditions like this.

Ugh!

Oh, God, that's foul!

Sorry, that was a bit of a shocker how nasty that was.

[laughs]

It's not really coffee at all.

That's the trick.

It's mostly chicory with sugar mixed

up into a sort of cordial, which you then added hot water to.

And it's just a small glass bottle that seals up.

A small bottle like that could be put

in one of the fellow's packs.

And they drank a lot of it.

I mean, this bottle was actually dug

up on the Somme battlefield.

[Ruth] But things were about to change.

When the Americans joined the Great War in 1917,

they brought with them George Washington instant coffee,

named after its recent inventor rather

than the first president.

Here we have George Washington brand.

OK.

So for a start, it's proper coffee

with proper caffeine in it.

Well, that's going to make a difference hopefully.

So it was made by basically making

coffee and then evaporating the water

off and tinning the powder.

Oh, well, let's try this then, see if it tastes any better.

Let's try some.

Yeah.

You'd know it was coffee.

It's not great coffee.

But you'd know it was coffee.

Oh, absolutely.

And what do the American soldiers think of it?

It became so popular that they even nicknamed it.

They called it a cup of George.

[Ruth] By the time the Second World War came around,

American brands like Nescafé and Maxwell

House had refined instant coffee manufacturing techniques.

Sachets of this new, improved coffee powder

were put in all the ration packs of the GI Joes

and became so synonymous with American soldiers

that the name changed from a cup of George to a cup of Joe.

So as well as thanking the Americans for supporting us

in two world wars, it seems that we

also owe them gratitude for the mass production

of instant coffee.

[clinking, whirring]

[music playing]

[Gregg] In Derbyshire, we've now got coffee granules.

But they're still frozen.

It's time to put the dry into this freeze-dried coffee.

The granules emerge from the freezer in shallow trays.

Each one holds 15 kilos,

enough for 75 jars.

They head into an airlock and are

fed into a gigantic vacuum chamber, where all

the air has been sucked out.

This extreme low-pressure environment

is the same as sending our coffee 60 miles into space.

Please explain to me why it needs to be at that pressure?

OK, the reason it's at that pressure,

we need to go from a solid, which

is the ice, which we formed in the cold room, to a vapor.

Now, we need to do that so rapidly that we

don't go back to a water phase.

Otherwise you will end up with concentrated liquid again.

[Gregg] The dryer is heated up, which melts

the ice within the granules.

But in the vacuum, the ice turns immediately into a gas

without going through a liquid phase.

It's a process called sublimation.

So the water is coming out of our icy coffee--

That's correct.

- -in vapor--

Yes.

- -leaving behind the frozen dried coffee bits?

At that point, it's no longer frozen.

It's just a dry coffee bit.

[Gregg] It takes three hours for the coffee

to travel through the dryer.

Right, so what is happening to it right now?

We empty the trays.

It just rotates the tray around, gives it at knock.

And all that coffee will fall down.

And that goes into a big bag below.

Now, that's the sort of technology I can understand.

Good.

[Gregg] I like the way the two hammers

come over and hit the tray.

[chuckles] If I was going to be a machine in here,

I'd be that one.

Come on in .

Here it goes.

Boing!

11 hours and 37 minutes ago, we had green beans.

Now we've got freeze-dried instant coffee.

The granules fall down a chute into the room below.

Once the bag is full of coffee, it's

transferred to the filling area, where Dawn

Thompson is waiting for me.

Dawn, can I come up?

Come on up.

Right.

Now, Dawn, we are just about to put coffee in the jars,

aren't we?

So what we're going to do now, shortly--

Don't call me "Shorty."

[laughs] We're going to release this bag of coffee.

OK, would you like to do this next step?

[Gregg] How much coffee is in this bag?

450 kilos.

Half a ton?

How many jars does that make?

Around 2,250 jars of coffee.

And so all the technical stuff I've seen,

all the space-age stuff, I'm going to empty

it now by pulling the string?

Yeah, the cord.

- Is that right? - Yes.

[Gregg] It's coming.

Ah!

We've got granules.

But they don't smell like the coffee I know.

That's because the aroma we stored earlier still

needs to be put back in.

This is the last part of the process,

where we actually put the in-jar aroma back in before filling.

- "In-jar" aroma? - In-jar aroma.

Why you do that?

Just so that we get that powerful smell when it--

Yeah, so when you open that jar of coffee,

you get that nice coffee smell.

Do you just spray it on on the top of the jars?

Or--

It gets sprayed onto the coffee

going into the filling room.

[Gregg] The granules get a good blast of that familiar coffee

aroma on their way down.

So can you take me and show me what happens to this now?

Of course, it'd be my pleasure.

Go on, you go first.

Thank you, Dawn.

Coffee is grown in over 50 countries around the world.

And more than 125 million people rely

on it for their livelihood.

But the future of the coffee plant could be at risk.

Cherry's at Kew Gardens, home to the world's

largest botanical collection, to meet Dr. Aaron Davis.

He's just returned from a fact-finding mission

to one of the world's largest coffee-producing countries,

Ethiopia.

Hi, Aaron. Lovely to meet you.

Very nice to meet you, Cherry.

So is this the coffee plant?

Yes, this is arabica coffee.

OK.

It's arabica coffee that we love to drink.

[Cherry] What have you discovered about what's

going on with the plant at the moment?

What we wanted to understand is

how climate change is going to affect

coffee across this century.

And it's not good news, I'm afraid.

In many cases, we've seen arabica dying

in Ethiopia through drought.

- Completely? - Completely.

And I'm talking about hundreds, even thousands of hectares.

[Cherry] It's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Rising temperatures and droughts are causing harvests to fail.

Aaron's expedition data is being mapped by his colleague, Justin

Mote, in order to predict which coffee-growing areas are

at risk.

Hi, Justin.

So what does that map show us?

Yeah, so this is basically a spatial model.

So the green areas represent where

good climate, good conditions for coffee growth are.

And we can look at the present day.

But we can also project this towards the future.

Why does it keep moving?

[Justin] Temperatures are increasing.

But also, rainfall patterns are changing, as well.

So the only places that coffee will enjoy will be higher up,

higher elevations.

[Cherry] This data is helping coffee

farmers plan for the future.

Would you say that people are responding to this?

What we're actually seeing now is

farmers going to some altitudes we've never seen before.

There's only so high you can go.

Eventually, yeah, we'll go off the top

if we carry on with these temperature increases.

And actually, coffee will be the last of our problems.

It certainly will be.

Yeah.

These hotter, drier conditions will have an impact on coffee

worldwide.

So the search is on to find a more

resilient species of the plant.

Aaron is delving into Kew's archives

to see if solutions for the future

can be found in the records of the past.

This place is amazing.

What's in here?

This is Kew's herbarium, home to around seven million

dried plant specimens.

How is looking through these old specimens going to help

you solve the future of coffee?

Within these specimens, there is lots of information,

and information which you cannot find anywhere else.

Let me give you an example.

We have a coffee here from East Africa.

We know this is a dry area, collected

almost exactly 100 years ago.

And it says here, the beans are harvested from both wild

and cultivated bushes--

Yes.

- -and fetch a high price on the European markets.

So it was sold in Europe?

Yet, we know almost nothing about this coffee.

If that coffee plant can cope with conditions

where there isn't a lot of water and it tastes amazing--

Yes.

- -then there's your answer.

That's the moonshot. That's the dream.

[chuckles] We've actually managed to acquire a sample.

We have some roasted that we can go and try now.

That's very, very exciting.

Let's go and have a very exclusive cup of coffee.

OK.

[inspiring music]

- Cheers. - Cheers.

To coffee's future.

What is that funny taste?

You're right. It's...

- What is it? - ...eucalyptus-ey.

I don't think this coffee is the ultimate solution.

But with 125 known species recorded in the archive,

Aaron remains hopeful.

So what is the dream?

What would you absolutely love to discover?

What we'd really love to discover

is a climatically tolerant coffee

that tastes as good or perhaps even better than arabica.

Are you looking for magic beans?

- We are. - Good luck.

- Thank you. - [clink]

[music playing]

[Gregg] Back in the factory, we've prepared the coffee.

Now we need to get the jars ready.

I love this stuff.

I'm an absolute sucker for this stuff.

I could watch this all day long.

What is happening?

[Dawn] So the four clamp arms come in,

sweep it lovingly onto the conveyor belt.

[Gregg] So very much the same as if I have to carry

three pints back from the bar.

If I've got two, I've got one in each hand.

But if I have three, I've got them squeezed together.

That's what that's doing.

[Dawn] Let's try coming forward and see how far you can get.

It must break some.

No, very rarely, because it's such a light pressure.

It carries the jars across.

[Gregg] 300 jars a minute shuffle along the conveyor

and are gently encouraged into position.

Oh, they all get a bit bunched up here.

This is what's called the combiner.

So as they come off the bed, they're bunched together.

You deliberately create this curve--

Yes.

- -so the batches of jars catch up with each other.

Yes.

Come on, jars.

Come on.

[giggling] Come on, little jars.

How are they moving into single file?

I can understand the jars on the inside line.

But the ones on the outside, they

look like they're actually trying to push their way

into the dinner queue.

How does that happen?

They just can't wait to be filled.

However, the belt speeds are different to the ones

on the corner.

So they'll basically push themselves into single file.

With different belt speeds?

Yeah.

[Gregg] Now in an orderly queue, the jars

glide to the next machine.

Something is getting hold of them

and twisting and making them straight.

- Yeah. - Why?

Because as we go into the orientater,

we don't want them twisted--

The what?

The orientater.

What's an orientater?

[Cherry] The jars are coming into the machine.

They're not really in the correct format,

to the back to front.

But you're going to fill them up with coffee

and stick a lid on them, right?

Why does it matter if they're not

all exactly the same way round?

You have to make sure the label gets put

on the right way on the jar.

[Gregg] It looks like the end of the line

might be a cliffhanger.

They're going over the edge.

It's like a Big Dipper.

I just imagine them all at the funfair going, [fake screaming]

[laughing]

So are we finally going to put coffee in them, though?

- Finally. - Come on, show me.

Brilliant factory.

[fair music, kids squealing]

[beeping]

12 hours and 42 minutes into the production process, coffee

meets jar.

It's a nice sight, isn't it, actually.

Lovely. Look at that.

This machine fills 280 jars a minute.

It'll take more than 11 hours to get through today's

batch of 175,000.

The caps are on.

But hang on.

Where's the gold seal?

As you can see, when we open this jar up,

it doesn't have the seal across the top

that you see when you open a jar of coffee.

The seal is actually in here.

[Gregg] So the seal is already in the lid.

[Dawn] That's correct, yes.

[Gregg] And that machine does what to the lid?

[Dawn] It actually seals the membrane to the top of the jar.

Through the lid?

[Dawn] Through the lid.

[Gregg] The plates above the jars work

like upside-down hot plates.

They heat the foil to 80 degrees C, hot enough to melt the glue,

releasing the foil down onto the glass

without melting the lid itself.

That's remarkable.

That's one of the most mysterious things

I've ever seen in a factory.

I recognize that.

That is a beautiful roasted coffee smell.

It does seem strange you have to take the smell

out and put it back in again.

Clever.

So thank you.

So through all the amazing processes in this factory,

this has been the most fun.

- Come here. - I'm glad.

Thank you very much.

My pleasure.

Now it's time for the final steps.

The labels are put on the jars.

And they're wrapped in groups of six.

A shipping label is blown on.

And they're sent up a spiral conveyor for one last joyride.

Then robots begin an elaborate stacking routine.

They arrange the jars with some at right angles to the others

and squeeze them together to form a layer,

making sure the gap's in a different place each time.

This strange pattern is mathematically calculated

to give the 1.4-meter-high stack stability

and strength and to reduce the chance of breakages.

Finally, they're wrapped in cellophane.

13 hours and 22 minutes ago, I saw green beans

arriving at the factory.

They've been roasted, ground, concentrated, frozen,

and sent into space.

Now transformed into freeze-dried coffee granules,

they're ready to leave the factory.

Waving them off is Clive Whitebrooke.

That's it.

It's my coffee being loaded on the truck, Clive.

It is the final pallet.

Though, it's 48, which is about, approximately,

40,000 jars, so which is about 4.4 million servings.

On that lorry is 4 and 1/2 million cups of coffee.

Yes.

How many lorries leave here every day?

Approximately six.

Wow, quite a phenomenal process, isn't it?

It is.

For something so relatively simple.

Yeah, and that's what we all take for granted.

Full to the brim.

That's it.

And that's ready to go, right?

It is.

It's been quite a journey, you know?

From bean to jar.

It's been absolutely amazing.

From the factory, the jars head to supermarket shelves

in the UK, Europe, and almost every corner of the world,

including coffee-producing countries Peru and Ecuador.

I drink instant coffee.

And if you'd have asked me how it was made,

I think I would have come up with roasting the beans

and grinding them.

But never in my wildest dreams would I

have ever imagined sheets of coffee frozen to -50 degrees,

or then being dried out in machines that look

like Victorian steam engines.

Hours and hours of complicated scientific

process so that you and I can make a cup of coffee

in seconds.

[music playing]