Most people like coffee, and rightly so. Coffee's one of those universal things many of us do in the morning, though for many it's strictly "a thing to do". If you're one of those strange people that really likes coffee, and enjoy learning more about coffee, then you're in the right place! I also have some repositories for coffee-related projects on my Github.
Does coffee grind size matter?
A few years ago I delved deep into the world of grind size and its implications. Spurred by Alex Gagne's grindsize application, I was driven to utilize the fantastic program he wrote and expanded upon it some to produce interesting and enlightening results. The catalyst of my inquiry into coffee grind sizes was primarily a notable, in anecdotal, decline in both brew and taste uniformity, as well as brew duration on the EK43 I had access to at the time. Some cups would be clear, crisp, and exactly what we expected yet the next could easily be long, dull, flat, or even bitter from extended brewtime.
A colleague recommended we align our burrs considering the grinder had been through several years of hard work. Via a back of the envelope calculation I estimated the grinder had seen about 5kg throughput. While this was within Mahlkonig's spec for the burr's lifecycle, I went ahead and did an alignment anyways. The most interesting part of this experiment was both the measurable difference in grind uniformity as well as a perceptible increase in brew-to-brew uniformity. Needless to say, we were all quite happy to revitalize what is an otherwise absolute workhorse of a coffee grinder.
For the whole story, read the paper I wrote on the subject by clicking the link below!
Is there such a thing as too fresh? How about too old?
Yes, and yes (but probably not as nigh-approaching as you may have been told).
I've been told countless times by direct colleagues and/or others in the industry some iteration of: "if it's more than a week old, it's no good" or "you have only have two weeks max to drink this bag of coffee". This is unfortunately some kind of myth that's pervaded many specialty coffee shops, and I, too, fell victim to this notion for a time. It wasn't until I worked at a roastery that I really discovered the nuances involved in coffee freshness.
To uncover more about coffee freshness, read the below article! (coming soon)
Coffee "Freshness" and Age
What coffee equipment do I use?
I've tried all sorts of coffee things over the years, but really I'm a pourover guy at heart. It's one of those things in life where, like driving a manual car, you can have all sorts of control, particularities, accomplishment, and striving or it can be a delightfully repititious event.
These days I'm primarily brewing with:
Fellow Stagg 900mL kettle
Baratza Vario grinder
Acaia Perl scale
Hario v60 / Chemex
It's odd putting it into such a list, because it seems so short. But it's taken years of pallette training, trying new tools, and skill-building to really land on these few items as the particular items of choice. Of utmost significance is the Baratza Vario, and if you don't know why I think grinders are the most important part of your coffee gear you should really checkout my paper Quantitative Assesment of Burr Alignment.
Want incredible scientific coffee and coffee-related literature?
Well of course you do, otherwise, why would you be here? Below is a list of 100 scientific papers on coffee and the myriad dynamics that dictate what you drink.
sha256: 896cdfe9eea9278625332442ea0917b65ae07a4c38a9c6b1a58e6e3fc5e44772
Click to download a compressed tar of peer-reviewed papers
The above list is compiled from a presentation given at the 2019 Coffee Expo given by Chris Hendon. Do give his page a look.