Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-right dept.

Skilled baristas know that achieving the perfect complex flavor profile for a delectable shot of espresso is as much art as science. Get it wrong, and the resulting espresso can taste too bitter or sourly acidic rather than being a perfect mix of each. Now, as outlined in a new paper in the journal Matter, an international team of scientists has devised a mathematical model for brewing the perfect cup, over and over, while minimizing waste.

[...]There's actually an official industry standard for brewing espresso, courtesy of the Specialty Coffee Association

[...]most coffee shops don't follow this closely, typically using more coffee, while the brewing machines allow baristas to configure water pressure, temperature, and other key variables to their liking.

[...]"Most people in the coffee industry are using fine-grind settings and lots of coffee beans to get a mix of bitterness and sour acidity that is unpredictable and irreproducible," said Hendon, a computational chemist at the University of Oregon.

[...]the group's experiments, revealed that if coffee is ground too finely, it can clog the coffee bed, thereby reducing extraction yield. It's also a big factor in the variability in taste. The researchers concluded that there are better methods for maximizing extraction yield, such as using fewer beans and coarser grinds with a bit less water. And the Specialty Coffee Association might be interested to hear that brew time is largely irrelevant.

[...]"Though there are clear strategies to reduce waste and improve reproducibility, there is no obvious optimal espresso point," said Hendon. "There is a tremendous dependency on the preferences of the person producing the coffee; we are elucidating the variables that they need to consider if they want to better navigate the parameter space of brewing espresso."

[...]"The real impact of this paper is that the most reproducible thing you can do is use less coffee," said Hendon. "If you use 15 grams instead of 20 grams of coffee and grind your beans coarser, you end up with a shot that runs really fast but tastes great. Instead of taking 25 seconds, it could run in 7 to 14 seconds. But you end up extracting more positive flavors from the beans, so the strength of the cup is not dramatically reduced. Bitter, off-tasting flavors never have a chance to make their way into the cup."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/the-math-of-brewing-a-better-espresso/


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday January 23 2020, @02:26PM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 23 2020, @02:26PM (#947396) Journal

    the rest of the world is kinda hopeless)

    I'm having my "double-shot espresso** with half" (a teaspoon of sugar) in Melbourne [google.com] brewed by, in my case, either a Brazilian or a Colombian barista (too lazy to walk to the city lanes to get to the Italian ones). Tell ya, it's strong enough that if you stick a nail in my coffee, it will stand straight. Yet it's full of flavor and not a note of sourness in it.

    The excellent local coffee roasters and the amount of coffee consumed here guarantees always freshly roasted beans. Search for cities with best coffee in the world [google.com] and you'll find Melbourne among them. Many will mention Melbourne as a serious contender to the "coffee capital of the world" in terms of coffee culture.

    ---
    ** if I'm not mistaken, the Italians call it "doppio"

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:24PM

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:24PM (#947665) Journal

    I took a time machine and answered you in #947350.

    --
    Account abandoned.