Coffee is among the most consumed beverages in the world.
Mastering the art of making a delightful cup of coffee has become a coveted skill as people become more discreet about the subtleties of taste, fragrance, and excellence inherent in a skillfully brewed cup. Responding to the growing interest from people, scientists have revealed a finding that could be the secret to making your favorite cup of coffee taste even better.
Researchers have discovered a simple trick that was published on December 6 in the journal Matter: adding a tiny bit of water to coffee beans before grinding them could significantly improve the flavor of your coffee.
As per a release, coffee beans with higher internal moisture produce less static electricity, which means less coffee is wasted and there is less mess to clean up. This effect can be simulated by adding a small amount of water to the beans immediately before grinding them. The team also showed that grinding with a splash of water produces more consistent and intense espresso.
"Moisture, whether it's residual moisture inside the roasted coffee or external moisture added during grinding, is what dictates the amount of charge that is formed during grinding," said senior author Christopher Hendon, a computational materials chemist at the University of Oregon.
"Water not only reduces static electricity and therefore reduces mess as you're grinding, but it can also make a major impact on the intensity of the beverage and, potentially, the ability to access higher concentrations of favorable flavours. These improvements to coffee extraction could have massive economic implications for the coffee industry, which is worth $343.2 billion, or 1.5% of the US gross domestic product," the researchers say.
"Pushing the concentration up by 10%-15% for the same dry coffee mass has huge implications for saving money and improving quality," says Mr Hendon.