Coffee is more than a drink: it is a ritual for millions of people every day. Apart from its health benefits, preparing a good coffee gives us a few minutes of relaxation in which we are pending one thing: nail the processes to get the best possible coffee. It is not so easy, since it not only depends on the raw material and having a good coffee, but we need a good grinder and know the preparation technique.
In the MIT they have gone a step further, with a course that combines chemistry, creativity and latest technology to get what we all look for every morning: prepare the perfect coffee.
Class 3,000. ‘Coffee Matters: Using The Breakerspace to make the perfect cup’, or ‘Coffee matters: using the breakrspace to make the perfect cup’ is the name of the course. They have not taken joke this to seek to prepare the best coffee, since ‘Breakerspace’ is a laboratory managed by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in which students have access to high -tech tools to study in -depth materials.
Thus, in the same place where 3D printed wood or superconductors is studied, students have put coffee in the spotlight. In the course, students learn about the different aspects of coffee, and how any variation in the process of roasting and extraction affects the flavor.
Coffee creativity. Apart from the weekly conferences that deal with issues such as the chemical composition of the grains or molecular changes that occur during toast, the course has a practical approach. It is also a pleasure, since they have tasting periods in which students try coffees of different origins, ties and extraction processes.
The idea is that, after understanding the theory, they are the ones who try to create the best way to prepare the drink. How do they do it? With the tools at your disposal. An example is the observation under the microscope of the changing structure of ground coffee while adding hot water.
Jeffrey Grossman is the creator of the course and ensures that coffee is something fascinating because it is tremendously easy to manipulate. Therefore, precisely, it is so complicated that the result is the ideal.
Examples of heated coffee samples in the microwave that pass through the microscope to investigate the differences in the chemical composition
Interesting results. A group investigated how additives work when balancing coffee flavors. Using an infrared spectroscope to analyze the chemical compounds of their preparations, they played adding additives such as salt, chili oil or anise to balance the taste of poorly prepared coffee.
They discovered that a certain amount of these additives can ‘fix’ a coffee too acidic (sub -expire) or one too bitter (overexsed). Controlling the exact point of coffee extraction is another of the themes of the course and it is something that we all have at hand at home, playing with the quantities, grinding and extraction times to get a coffee as pleasant as possible to keep all Your flavor notes.
What if we throw Chilean oil to fix a poorly extracted coffee?
Applications. Obviously, we do not have those tools, but the interesting courses of such technical and scientific courses with the preparation of coffee as the protagonist is that what has been learned can be transferred to homes. Let’s not think about “From now on I am going to throw 8 drops of anise if I have sub -expressed coffee”, but something much more practical.
For example, one of the groups is investigating what changes freely freezes. Popular wisdom dictates that it is not advisable to do so, but this group is analyzing how to freeze ground coffee or grain impacts the chemical composition of coffee and the final taste.
Cases such as heating coffee in the microwave are also analyzed to see how its composition changes, the difference between authentic coffee and the ‘false’ that already begins to see the streets or the best storage method so that coffee does not oxidize. We know that once toasted coffee has an ideal date of consumption, something that shortens much more when moving due to the oxidation process by contact with oxygen, and in courses thus is calculated millimetric how all this affects the taste of the taste of the taste of The cup.
So much to be subjective. All this is great and, as we say, once these scientific studies are consolidated, the torrent of popular culture on coffee was spotted. And they also serve to develop better tools or much more precise industrial processes. But the big problem is that, because of many data that we extract from the analysis with tools such as the infrared spectroscope, the exam is something much more subjective, the palate.
After all the analysis and registration of attributes such as acidity, bitterness, sweetness and taste in general, one of the students confirms that, in the end, it is something subjective. When they perform the tasting, “sometimes there is consensus in the group and I think people like the most intense coffee, not watering,” says this student.
In the end, no matter how much technology is related or the processes are adjusted, coffee is still an art and a science. What makes a cup perfect is how it adapts to the taste of who drinks it. And there, neither spectroscopy nor microscopes can compete with the subjective power of the human palate.
Images | MIT (Jason Sparapani)
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