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Maths Zeroes in on Perfect Cup of Coffee (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the quest-for-perfect-coffee dept.

One coffee drinker's perfect brew may be another drinker's battery acid. For this reason, and presumably others, mathematicians are zeroing in on the equations behind the taste of drip coffee. From a report on BBC:Composed of over 1,800 chemical components, coffee is one of the most widely consumed drinks in the world. The work by Kevin Moroney at the University of Limerick, William Lee at the University of Portsmouth and others offers a better understanding of the parameters that influence the final product. It had previously been known that grinding beans too finely could result in coffee that is over-extracted and very bitter. On the other hand not grinding them enough can make the end result too watery. "What our work has done is take that [observation] and made it quantitative," said Dr Lee. "So now, rather than just saying: 'I need to make [the grains] a bit bigger,' I can say: 'I want this much coffee coming out of the beans, this is exactly the size [of grain] I should aim for." Dr Lee says he sets his grinder to the largest setting. By doing so, he says: "The grains are a bit larger than you get in the standard grind, which makes the coffee less bitter. Partly because it's adjusting that trade-off between the stuff coming out of the surface and stuff coming out of the interior. When things are larger, you're decreasing the overall surface area of the system. "Also, the water flows more quickly through a coffee bed of large grains, because the water's spending less time in contact with the coffee, helping reduce the amount of extraction too. "If it's bitter, it's because you're increasing the amount of surface area in the grains. Also, when the grains are very small, it's hard for the water to slide between them, so the water is spending a lot more time moving through the grains -- giving it more time for the coffee to go out of solution."

4 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Drip Coffee? by twistedcubic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why study taste using the worst preparation method? Drip coffee taste awful.

    1. Re:Drip Coffee? by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have a French press, an automatic drip, and an espresso machine. I like all of them, and the fancy strikes me for different styles at different times. The automatic drip is my usual choice when I want to drink a whole bunch of coffee over the duration of a morning. Your user ID is lower than mine - surely you are too old for these hipster pissing contests? Just drink what you like.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  2. 'Drip coffee' != 'perfect' no matter how you do it by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Drip coffee is crap, plain and simple. You want decent-tasting coffee? Use a press instead. With drip coffee, the oils that make it taste really good end up floating on top and don't get down into the pot, are wasted, and you get inferior-tasting brew. With a press, you get everything the grounds have to offer, resulting in a richer, more complex, better-tasting brew. Yes, it takes longer (8 minutes plus prep time) but if you want to not waste perfectly good (and expensive) coffee, then that's what it takes to get the most out of it.

    You're welcome. :-)

  3. Coffee taste is Subjective. End of story. by geekmux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Arguing how to make the "perfect" cup of coffee is like trying to convince the world what makes up the "perfect" soulmate.

    If there's anything to be extracted from Starbucks here, it's that "perfect" coffee is as subjective as the justification behind their insane menu options.

    Pointless bullshit surveys are pointless. You probably won't even be able to convince a large enough test group to validate the results anyway, and bringing math into the equation is as useless as bringing math into the bedroom.