Pu’er Coffee

 Today, vacuum packaging is a perfectly ordinary way to keep food fresh. But if we turn the clock back to the early 19th century, preserving coffee over long-distance transport was a serious challenge. Once coffee beans are roasted, they oxidize easily and lose their flavor quickly. If someone could solve that problem, it would be nothing short of a technological revolution. That’s exactly what we’re exploring today: who invented vacuum packaging for coffee, and how this invention went on to carry a coffee brand through more than a century of history. Before we get to the invention itself, we need to understand a coffee brand with over a hundred years of heritage—Hills Bros. Coffee, from the United States. As early as 1873, Old Austin Hills, a shipyard worker, traveled from New England to California with his two sons, Austin Herbert and Reuben Wilmarth. After settling down, the younger Austin and R.W. (as Reuben was usually called) began selling coffee, tea, and dairy products from...