Slashdot Mirror
Maths Zeroes in on Perfect Cup of Coffee (bbc.com)
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."
Why study taste using the worst preparation method? Drip coffee taste awful.
I mostly work from home and I brew a 6 cup pot of coffee almost every day, I put in two scoops (which are roughly equivalent to 1 heaping tablespoon) and it got me thinking about a month ago what the actual coffee to water ratio was supposed to be.
I found this chart (or one like it) https://blackbearcoffee.com/re...
Tried it out and my god, if that's the actual ratio I'm surprised most people can't see through time. I'll stick with my weak brew... if anything to ensure my particles don't vibrate through the fabric of reality
crazy dynamite monkey
You're welcome. :-)
Matter of taste. "burnt" is just a darker roast that is preferred in most of the world. Starbucks isn't great coffee but it's not terrible either. All those that call it burnt just like a lighter roast. To me lighter roasts taste sour and disgusting. To each their own.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
Interesting. This is a classic example of Darcy's law (fluid flow in porous media). Coffee is a classic dual-porosity system. First, you have to model the flow through the intra-granular pores in the coffee grounds and the removal of water soluble and hydrophobic compounds (i.e. "oils") from the grain surfaces. Then you also need to model the water imbibition into the grains and the transport of the same compounds to the surface of the grains. What a fun twist on petroleum reservoir simulation. Yeah, I've waited years to geek out on /.
I heard once that Starbucks over-roasted their beans so the flavor would survive transport and storage for longer periods. And then the flavor caught on even without the extra transport and storage time. Kind of like India Pale Ale originally being brewed extra-hoppy so that it would survive the boat trip from the UK to India.
Can anyone confirm this?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
brew a cup that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee
K-cups
In an age where we're trying to promote reusability and recycling and reduce waste, Your K-cups are a throwback, they're a waste of money, and you have little control over how your coffee is made.
Composed of over 1,800 chemical components, coffee is one of the most widely consumed psychoactive drugs in the world
You can also get wimpy coffee out of a press by cutting the steep time.
No kidding, that's why I said 8 minutes steep time. Any more than that does you no good, any less than that and you're not getting the most out of the grounds.
There are people who hate the bitter and add paper to press like methods.
Those are people who probably don't really like coffee that much in the first place. They should stick to light roast, or just make tea. Keep in mind the average person doesn't know really good coffee from a hole in the ground, they only notice when it's really, really bad; the average person also drinks a 'coffee-like beverage' that is little more than brown water that someone gently whispered the word 'coffee' at to flavor it. Furthermore the average person thinks the syrupy 'drinks' they sell at Starbucks, that are maybe 10% coffee and 90% sugar and other things are 'coffee'; they're more like 'diabetes precursors'.
Try this http://www.dictionary.com/brow...
Click the little speaker icon next to the word "maths"
It will, as if my magic, pronounce the word for you.
A couple years ago (2012 or 13), I was gifted a bag of Starbucks "Christmas Roast". I came home, ground some and made a drip. It was very bitter, but I just laced it with cream and sugar until it was ok. Then my GF came home, came straight to my study and asked, "have you lost your fucking mind? why were you smoking in the kitchen?" She thought I'd been smoking cigarettes in the there.
I was waiting for this thread. I like it hot, strong, and bitter, and available on most NYC street corners for under five dollars.
Given: A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
We have now demonstrated: A mathematician is a machine for converting theorems into coffee.
Have gnu, will travel.
I like it just a little bitter, loaded with Irish whiskey and covered in whipped cream.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Robusta doesn't necessarily mean bad coffee though. Italians love it.
For you average cup of joe it makes an inferior drink, however if you're making an espresso it adds to the crema. Depends on what type of coffee you're making and what you're expecting.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I heard once that Starbucks over-roasted their beans so the flavor would survive transport and storage for longer periods.
Dark roast coffees maintain a more consistent flavor between batches and different bean types. Lighter roast coffee can be very inconsistent. If you're trying to maintain a consistent "brand" it's much easier to do with a darker roast.
And again... "over-roasted" is subjective. Many people around the world (and even in parts of the US) prefer a darker roast to your typical new-England single-crack roasts.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You're not supposed to put the cup into your grinder.
Oswald McWeany opined:
Matter of taste. "burnt" is just a darker roast that is preferred in most of the world.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
Back in the 1990's, on vacation in the Big Island of Hawaii, my wife and I got caught in a genuinely torrential downpour while driving on a narrow, two-lane road on the Kona coast. Rain so intense that I literally couldn't see more than five feet beyond the hood of our rental car. Scary, actual, given the winding road. So I pulled off into the first space we saw (at about 5 MPH) - which turned out to be the Kona Coffee Growers Co-op's storefront/roasting facility. After ten minutes of sitting in the downpour, with the windshield fogging over, I said, "The Hell with this,", and we made a dash from the car to the front door of the Co-op.
Inside the store, it turned out they had a little museum exhibit, with displays on growing and processing, along with plenty of merchandise. And coffee, of course. We browsed the museum and checked out the merch, and, pretty soon, we'd exhausted the entertainment potential of the place, while, outside, the rain continued to hammer down relentlessly. So, out of boredom as much as curiosity, I asked at the counter if the Co-op's roastmaster was available to chat. As it turned out, he was.
Nice guy. Friendly, intelligent, and, as you might expect, tremendously knowledgeable about all aspects of coffee production. We chatted about growing conditions and the rarity of what's called "peabody beans" (double-centered coffee beans that produce especially smooth and flavorful coffee, and which are around twice the price of the already quite pricey regular Kona stuff) how the coffee *quot;cherries" are fermented, lightly mashed, and the fruit is separated from the pit of the cherry (the pits being what we call coffee beans), dried, then roasted. All quite interesting. Eventually, the subject got around to varous roasts, and I mentioned to him that French roast had always tasted burnt to me.
"That's because it is,quot; he responded. "The difference between medium and dark roast is only 17 seconds in the roaster, but, in that 17 seconds, the outer skin of the bean actually begins to carbonize. The longer it stays in the roaster from there, the more the skin burns, and the darker the roast becomes." He also told me that he, personally, preferred a medium roast - and that a light roast, while it produces fairly weak-flavored coffee, retains considerably more caffeine than darker roasts. (The darker the roast, the less caffeine in the brew.) Thus, the lighter the roast, the bigger the kick.
So, no. I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Dark roasted coffee is produced by actually, physicallly burning the skin of the coffee bean. roast (Starbucks' default roast) is produced by allowing the beans to remain in the roaster until the skin burns away and the outside of the inner bean itself carbonizes.
In other words, the characteristic taste of French roast is due to the fact that the beans it's made from are half charcoal.
Check out my novel.
You could say Americans love bacon- but it doesn't make up the majority of our diet.
A true Espresso is not espresso to an Italian without a certain amount of Robusta. It's not just Espresso either, numerous dark roasts in that country (and other countries) contain some Robusta, it adds an earthy flavor that some find appealing. Certain countries have an aversion to robusta that others don't... and it's because most robusta out there IS nasty, but not all of it.
Even the nasty bitter taste associated with Robusta can be avoided with some high quality Robusta beans. (sounds an oxymoron, but there is such thing as high quality, well washed, robusta).
Robusta isn't my cup of tea (or coffee), but to many robusta isn't quite the enemy it is in other countries. (it's also healthier, more economical to grow, and causes less waste).
We're probably all going to be drinking more Robusta in a few decades if the plants producing Arabica die off.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You might as well drink 'Folger's'.
This is in fact what I do because I'm cheap and it's good enough in my opinion.
I used to buy coffee beans from Starbuck's clones (there are plenty of smaller regional ones) but why pay that much when I just want to make a strong caffeine drink at home?