Electrical Current Might be the Key to a Better Cup of Coffee
HowdyDoody writes:
University of Oregon chemist Christopher Hendon loves his coffee-so much so that studying all the factors that go into creating the perfect cuppa constitutes a significant area of research for him. His latest project: discovering a novel means of measuring the flavor profile of coffee simply by sending an electrical current through a sample beverage. The results appear in a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications.
We've been following Hendon's work for several years now. For instance, in 2020, Hendon's lab helped devise a mathematical model for brewing the perfect cup of espresso, over and over, while minimizing waste. The flavors in espresso derive from roughly 2,000 different compounds that are extracted from the coffee grounds during brewing. So it can be challenging for baristas to reproduce the same perfect cup over and over again.
That's why Hendon and his colleagues built their model for a more easily measurable property known as the extraction yield (EY): the fraction of coffee that dissolves into the final beverage. That, in turn, depends on controlling water flow and pressure as the liquid percolates through the coffee grounds. The model is based on how lithium ions propagate through a battery's electrodes, similar to how caffeine molecules dissolve from coffee grounds.
[...] There are existing methods for collecting information on coffee's chemical composition, most notably liquid or gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry. But these kinds of analyses are expensive and time-consuming, and predictive results are limited. There are also electrochemical techniques for measuring the concentration of caffeine and other molecules, but these have not taken into account coffee strength-a property determined by all the variables that go into preparing a cup of coffee, such as coffee and water masses, grind settings, water temperature and pressure, roast color, and so forth. That's the information likely to be most helpful to baristas.
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