Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/07/engineers-use-ultrasonic-reactor-to-make-cold-brew-coffee-in-under-3-minutes.html
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The whole point of cold brew (spoken as a coffee junkie aficionado) is the long brew time, the commitment to doing it right in a way that requires copious amounts of time. Also, I am not about to ultrasonicate my coffee grounds! It might turn me magnetic or something!
Seriously, I really like the slow process of making cold brew. If it works for commercial purposes, good for them. Not interested myself.
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New use for my harbor freight parts cleaner?
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What other developments do folks want to gatekeep?
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I’m all for this. As long as it’s not ridiculously expensive. Personally I don’t like the wait time for cold brews and have been adding ice to my morning coffee for a fast cold drink, at the expense of diluting the flavor.
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So it manages to make the coffee taste all oxidized in just three minutes?
I kid, mostly (just not a big fan of the taste of cold brew).
But I want to know what happens if you add the ultrasonics to a regular espresso - does it increase the extraction in any interesting ways?
I’m eagerly awaiting the lab-coated James Hoffmann video…
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Generative AI, weapons development. Give me a few minutes and I’ll come up with more.
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The idea isn’t particularly new, i want to say i’ve seen or heard of this method being used with spirits and wood shavings to rapidly infuse wood aged flavor into the spirit faster than just letting the barrels sit. In that context from what i know it doesn’t really work and the end result sucks. For cold brew coffee however i’m sure this has a better chance at working for commercial purposes, for at home use i’ve never been desperate enough that i need cold brew ASAP and i’m perfectly happy to set it overnight and deal with it in the morning. The effort involved into making cold brew is as close to zero as you can get, the only work involved is filtering the grounds.
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Simple solution-coffee ice cubes. That’s what my brother the coffee vendor does at his Long Island farmer’s market stalls.
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You could have had it three years ago:
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One can also pour hot-brewed coffee into a glass pitcher, cool on the counter, and then refrigerate for iced coffee available on the fly.
I like @BakerB’s coffee ice cube suggestion, but haven’t tried it myself. I do appreciate commercial operations that provide them, though.
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Just give them the Nobel Prize now - everything else in science is just noise.
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I struggle to imagine how it would work in the high pressure environment of espresso extraction
I think it would make the end result brew worse. One wants the coffee grounds to be somewhat well packed in the basket and if there was ultrasonic agitation it could create uneven cavities in the grounds from the pressurized water that is pushing through. I don’t know that this would actually happen and is just an educated guess, but as you say i don’t see how ultrasonics being added to the process would yield any improvements. Espresso coffee extraction is a fairly speedy process and adding an additional variable wouldn’t make the coffee better.
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What my teenage daughter does too.
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This applied to espresso beans = TIME TRAVEL
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