
Systematically Improving Espresso: Insights from Mathematical Modeling [pdf] - tasubotadas
https://pages.uoregon.edu/chendon/publications/2020/74.%20Matter,%20Espresso%20extraction.pdf
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mzl
James Hoffman (self-proclaimed "weird coffee person" with popular youtube
channel on coffee) did an interesting walk-through of the results and the
suggested process with commentary:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoYBLn9hRqs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoYBLn9hRqs)

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mhh__
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IKuUgEWAqg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IKuUgEWAqg)

Here is the Engineer Alan Hawse taking about how he "doses" his espresso with
his CNC milled equipment.

Utterly alien to me (I'm not a coffee guy)

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xavieralexandre
Decent Espresso makes a great machine to control espresso brewing parameters
[1]

My favorite feature is the ability to give it different target curves to
follow for different parameters during successive phases of the extraction.
You can for example ask the machine to pre-infuse for x seconds at a given
pressure and then switch to flow profiling and have the machine try to adjust
the pressure to follow a pre-set flow curve.

It makes it a powerful platform to isolate experimentally the contributions of
several brewing variables.

[1]:
[https://decentespresso.com/overview](https://decentespresso.com/overview)

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imglorp
And here I thought we were talking about logic minimization for combinational
elements. This stuff goes back to the 80's but it wouldn't be surprising if
there are new mathematical insights some day.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso_heuristic_logic_minim...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso_heuristic_logic_minimizer)

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pacamara619
tl;dr for baristi and cafe owners:

You can get away with less coffee on a coarser grind if the shot you pull
comes out rather rapidly since the amount of soluble material is similar to a
"regular" shot.

This is an opportunity to save money, especially if you only use the shot for
a milk based drink like a capuccino or a flat white.

When getting into specialty grade coffee it gets a little shakey, the taste is
still rather good but the texture is a little off.

~~~
crispyambulance
Yep, my favorite coffee bar uses only ~15g of grounds per shot, they "tune"
for each type of bean. But it's true you don't need to go past 20g for a
standard size portafilter. The volume yield is still in the range of a double
in the high 30's, so it works just fine even without milk.

I would add that virtually all coffee you get at an independent cafe or even
Starbucks is going to be speciality coffee.

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nothal
Do any HN coffee drinkers have any recommendations for precise/scientific
resources on coffee? I know a lot about brewing coffee in different ways and a
cursory amount about the 'what' of what's happening to the beans/grind but
would like to develop a more rigorous understanding.

~~~
xavieralexandre
I like the Illy [1] book on the subject. It is mainly about Italian espresso
though and less representative of 3rd wave brewing.

[1] [https://www.elsevier.com/books/espresso-
coffee/illy/978-0-12...](https://www.elsevier.com/books/espresso-
coffee/illy/978-0-12-370371-2)

~~~
whitepoplar
What're the differences between the two?

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anonymous_fun
For a second I thought this was about the Android testing framework,
[https://developer.android.com/training/testing/espresso](https://developer.android.com/training/testing/espresso).

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amelius
They should be inventing a way to be able to drink coffee all day without
negative side effects.

~~~
elbear
That would mean either:

1) removing caffeine from coffee. The problem with this approach is that it
changes the taste of coffee. Specialty decaf is not as good as regular
specialty

2) somehow prevent caffeine from getting to the adenosine receptors in the
body. I don't know how they could do that

~~~
to1y
The reason the decaf isn't as good is because they don't sell as much. These
days a good decaf is basically unrecognizable from the real thing.

~~~
elbear
It's true that there isn't much of market and I've had good decafs. However,
one issue is that the process that removes caffeine is expensive, so it's
really hard to find African decaf for example. I could only find Colombian and
I know there's also Mexican. Only one roaster from England had Ethiopian.

Another issue is that decaf tastes like a stronger roast while I like very
light roasts. So, yeah, I went back to regular coffee.

