A Really good cup of coffee .

A Really good cup of coffee .

Andre Willers

26 Jul 2009



Synopsis :

Capture the volatile essences of coffee through cold-brewing and microwaving .

Even revitalize stale ground coffee .



Discussion :

The Theory :

The food-preparation stage of coffee is done during the peeling , fermentation and especially roasting stages .

The grinding and brewing is to prepare it for ingestion via drinking . In these processes , a large percentage of the volatiles are lost (of about 800 distinct compounds at least .)



As discussed before , some are of distinct medical advantage ( see http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Aroma and Caffeine)"



Cold brewing .

This is a widely used cold-brewing method . See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toddy_coffee

This retains many volatiles lost by high temperature water brewing methods .



As discussed by many plain coffee-lovers , cold brewing gives the best tasting coffee of all . Because it retains many of the volatiles unnecessarily lost in the hot-water process .



But how to retain the volatiles when reheating the concentrate ?



The Microwave .

Put the coffee concentrate in cup , top up with cold water , cover with cling-wrap or splash/pressure guard and heat in the microwave until just below boiling (about 92-98 Centigrade)



How does it work ?

Shaken , but not stirred .

Like James Bond .



The cold brew is made by putting about 0.25 g of coffee grounds in one ml of water . This forms a coffee quicksand . Hence the shaken , not stirred . The volatiles are internally trapped by the coffee particles themselves , and dissolved in the water . This ratio is quite critical . Stirring it releases the volatiles , instead of trapping them .



This is left for about 12 hours . This can be hastened , but not without losing some of the tasty volatiles .

Boltzmann strikes again ! (Although covered pulsing is used by instant coffee manufacturers)



The Trick !

Put the resultant filtered concentrate in a cup and top up with cold , repeat cold water , cover with cling-wrap or splash/pressure guard and heat in the microwave until just below boiling (about 92-98 Centigrade)



The volatiles dissolve directly into the excited water molecules , without having much chance to escape .

Your coffee tastes like a freshly brewed cuppa .



Light sediment .

As you might have noticed , there is no heavy filtering . Light sediment still retains many molecules of flavour stuck to the walls (cf water molecules on dry sand) . The microwave process releases these , revitalizing even stale coffees .

I do not know what would happen with heavy sediment , but I suspect oily residues and tastes .



Sigh . I wish I could patent this . Even this little bit is worth a lot of money .



I tried this .

I took some very old ground coffee in the freezer (about 2 years old:stale) . Plonked them into a coffee plunger with cold water and left them for about 14 hours . Then simply decanted through a paper filter (not really necessary) .

Then about 6 tablespoons of concentrate per cup , microwaved as per above , gave a beautiful cup of coffee . The flavour and acidity came through perfectly , and there was no stomach acidity . The caffeine was noticeable , but not as heavy as with instant .



It Worked !

The stale coffee was revivivied !

A Dracula Special .



Speeding up the process .

You can try pulsing microwaves . About 5 seconds at a time .



Freezing has been done ad nauseam .

It is called instant coffee . The freezing process breaks some essential bonds on some of the more volatile chemicals .



Hint , hint :

By entangling the ends of some special molecules , during the freeze-drying process , a bias towards similar attachments can be formed during re-hydration . Simple lasers at special frequencies will suffice . Since the binding energies are low , even diode lasers will suffice . Cheap and tasty .



Sigh . This will be much easier with potato chips .

Hello Quantum Chips .

Especially with coffee , already proven to have easily-manipulated quantum characteristics .



And you thought I was joking .



Andre .