Category: Coffee review

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Coffee review Observations Science history slow

Like clockwork at Doctor Espresso, Putney Bridge

Doctor Espresso Putney Bridge
There is a lot of physics in this photo alone, but there is even more to be seen if you visit this lovely little cafe.

“Isn’t it a thing of beauty?” So wrote Brian’s coffee spot review of the 1956 Gaggia Tipo Americana espresso machine found at the Putney Station branch of Doctor Espresso. And it is only possible to answer this question in the affirmative. There is something about a mechanical piece of equipment (particularly if it is shiny and has levers) that ignites a feeling of awe. Perhaps it is the awareness of the complexity of the tasks that, when traced through the machine, are revealed to be the result of a series of simple, but ingenious steps. Perhaps it is the feeling that it is possible for someone, one individual, to know inside out how the piece of equipment works and, if necessary, to build it. Perhaps it is because it is shiny. Nonetheless, I had been itching to go and try The Caffetteria, the Doctor Espresso café opposite Putney Bridge station for ages, since I chanced upon its review in Brian’s Coffee Spot. Trundling through the hot streets of London in a bus in this recent heatwave nearly made me reconsider and yet we ploughed on, finally arriving in this shaded spot in the mid-afternoon.

There is very little seating inside but the shade outside enabled us to take a seat by the window. A perfect location to watch people coming and going to and from Putney Bridge Station: who will pick up that 5p on the floor? Will anyone notice? There are a few more chairs and tables across the pavement next to the tree. Several cakes tempted us but we resisted, instead I enjoyed a (single) espresso, Italian style, very drinkable. There is something very relaxing about enjoying an Italian espresso in an independent (or at least very small chain) café. The café aims to “provide a tranquil environment for customers to relax and converse” and it would certainly appear to do so with odd pieces of decor and posters prompting different bits of conversation. The barista was very friendly and trusted us to enjoy our coffee outside before coming back in to pay. Perhaps this seems a small thing, but trust helps to build societies and small gestures of good, repeated, have a ripple effect on our world¹. A nice touch.

espresso Doctor Espresso Putney
The result.
A single espresso ready for enjoying.

Brian’s Coffee Spot describes the process of ‘pulling’ an espresso using this lever machine (the oldest working espresso machine in London apparently). The machine combines the beauty of the mechanical with the skill of the barista to produce a great coffee. This is not human vs machine but human working with machine to create something that others appreciate. A similar respect for the machine was expressed by the clock maker John Harrison about three centuries ago. Harrison had just made a clock that was able to keep time accurately over many weeks while at sea. His task was necessary because having a clock that accurately kept the time at the departure port  would enable a ship’s navigators to calculate their geographical position based on a comparison of this port time to the local time experienced by the ship. He was trying to solve the problem of ‘longitude’. Harrison had taken 19 years to develop his H3 clock which could keep time accurately at sea despite changes in temperature, humidity or rough conditions but within a few more years he’d produced the H4 (which can now be seen in the National Maritime Museum). Significantly smaller than the H3, Harrison said of it:

“I think I may make bold to say, that there is neither any other Mechanical or Mathematical thing in the World that is more beautiful or curious in texture than this my watch or Time-keeper for the Longitude…”²

Enjoying coffee in the company of posters
A conversation piece? The physics of buoyancy or the deceptions of marketing. You could spend a long time at Doctor Espresso thinking about these things.

Harrison lived before espresso machines were invented. Self-taught, Harrison designed and built his own clocks. How many of us would be able to do that? Although we wear watches, how many contain batteries and other components that produce a simple action (showing the time) by complex means. The opposite of what we admire in the lever operated espresso machine. Each individual element may be elegant, but as a composite it can be ugly, however aesthetically satisfying. Harrison built his first clock before he was twenty years old and almost entirely out of wood. Working on the basis of a pendulum, he ensured that the cogs did not wear down as they may be expected to do by utilising the grain of the wood and by using only fast growing oak². Why would this make a difference? Trees that grow fast will have well separated growth rings. As the ring is an area of weakness in the wood, a fast growing tree would have a lot of solid wood compared to a relatively small number of rings, thus affecting the structural properties of the cogs. Moreover Harrison’s wooden clocks did not need oiling because those bits that needed oiling were carved from a tropical hardwood that exuded its own grease. In later clocks Harrison was to overcome the problem of the varying temperature experienced at sea by inventing the bimetallic strip. Two metals of different thermal expansion coefficients placed on top of each other, this simple piece of kit is essential for all sorts of modern machinery including, probably, the espresso machine sitting beautifully at Doctor Espresso.

A warm afternoon in a café of such elegant machinery offers plenty of opportunities to ponder the world of clockwork and levers. Do we understand how having a clock would allow us to calculate our geographical position? What about latitude? How many of us could do this for ourselves? And as we check the time while finishing our espresso, how many of us can appreciate the simplicity that leads to complexity and build our own?

 

¹A bit of cod-philosophy formed by combining bits from Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ with Paddington 2.

²Quoted from “Longitude”, Dava Sobel, 1995

Doctor Espresso’s Caffetteria is at 3 Station Approach, SW6 3UH

Categories
Allergy friendly cafe with good nut knowledge Coffee review Observations Science history Sustainability/environmental

Creating movement at Kahaila, Brick Lane

coffee Brick Lane, against trafficking, women's project, charity
Kahaila on Brick Lane. A small shop front concealing a large interior.

It’s always great to find an independent café selling good coffee (and cake) while giving something back to the community. It’s a reason to seek out small businesses rather than chains. Kahaila café on Brick Lane absolutely falls into this category. Although I had visited Kahaila previously, on that occasion the beigels (almost) next door were ‘calling’ and I did not give this space the time it deserved. This time however, the beigel shop had come first allowing us plenty of time to sit and ponder in this spacious café.

I had an espresso (toffee notes) together with a raspberry topped vegan chocolate cake (confidently nut free). There were a large variety of alternative cakes on offer at the counter along with cold drinks should you want them in summer. The espresso was a very enjoyable accompaniment to the cake (or should the cake be an accompaniment to the coffee?). The large room at the back of the café offered plenty of seating and was well lit by sunlight streaming through a window built into the roof.

coffee cake, Kahaila, Brick Lane
Raspberry vegan chocolate cake with espresso. The blue cup can affect the way the coffee is experienced.

One thing that immediately makes this café different from many others, is the fact that there is a donation box on the wall. Information cards on the table tops explain that Kahaila works as a charity providing education and support to women prisoners, helping women who have experienced abuse or are vulnerable in other ways to learn skills in a bakery and also offering a safe house for women who have been victim to exploitation and trafficking. All in all a café in which it would be good to spend more time (if only it were closer!). And assuming that the cakes are from the bakery, it forms a giving-circle with some great bakes on offer.

The vegan chocolate cake was a case in point. Beautifully presented, balanced in taste, in a perfectly sized portion to enjoy with a coffee. Ordinarily cakes require butter and eggs, how did the bakers manage it? Of course, a recipe was not given at the counter, nor would it necessarily have been particularly helpful to answer the question. Because the answer, if one exists, is a mix of their experimentation with flavours and textures together with an advancing knowledge of what each cake ingredient does.

sugar in a jar, Kahaila
The way these sugar cubes stacked in the jar and the sugar granules at the bottom reminded me of something. I was not able to put my finger on what it was…

Consider the egg yolk. In addition to adding mouth feel and texture to the cake or biscuit, the yolk contains emulsifying agents, such as lecithin, which act to stabilise suspensions of oil in water¹. With a hydrophobic section at one end of the molecule and a hydrophilic section elsewhere, the presence of lecithin molecules in the mixture prevents droplets of oil from grouping together and coalescing so as to separate into oil/water layers. By experimenting with non-egg based lecithin, a baker can combine different flavours and textures to produce a vegan cake.

A few years ago, a somewhat similar problem was vexing materials scientists: how to remove toxic lead from piezoelectric devices. Piezoelectric devices expand or contract when they are subjected to an electric field. This makes them useful for moving mechanisms such as watches and even as a way to open/close hot water valves in coffee machines. The problem was that one of the best piezoelectric materials we had was lead zirconate titanate (or PZT for short). In order to make the PZT material, the lead had to be sourced in quite large quantities and yet, being toxic and environmentally damaging, it was considered advantageous (even necessary) to remove the lead.

doorway in Kahaila
A painted doorway inside Kahaila in combination with flowers in front suggests a thought train about the way bees see.

However, just like the egg yolk in cookie recipes, you cannot just remove it and produce the same sort of effect in the finished product. You need to understand what role the lead was playing in order to be able to substitute it properly and even then, the effect may not be as good as the original ingredient (without some tweaking elsewhere in the recipe also). Consequently a lot of research has been undertaken in order to find new piezoelectric materials and to understand them so as to optimise the piezoelectric effect. Partly this involves adding the new ingredients slowly to understand their role. Partly it involves changing the growth conditions (somewhat equivalent to the baking temperature) in the crystals that are made. Always it involves experimenting and understanding the role that different ingredients play in our final devices.

Research is still ongoing to find a good substitute for lead in piezoelectric devices. But it goes to show that there are many connections between diverse areas of our experience. Unlike research into piezoelectric materials though, the advantage in experimenting with cakes is that the test of the result is in the eating. Now to experiment with some biscuit recipes…

Kahaila is at 135 Brick Lane, E1 6SB

¹On Food and Cooking, the science and lore of the kitchen, Harold McGee

 

 

 

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Allergy friendly cafe with good nut knowledge Coffee review Coffee Roasters Observations Science history Sustainability/environmental

Paradigm shifts at The Observatory, Marchmont St

lines on a table, parallax
An espresso using coffee from Redemption Roasters and a chocolate brownie. What more could you ask?

Many years ago, there was an aquatics shop on the site of what is now The Observatory, a combined photography gallery and coffee shop. Although there is plenty to see through this glass fronted café, you do not feel that you are in a goldfish bowl so much as that this is a space created for you to slow down and contemplate your surroundings. The large rooms and comfortably spaced tables do, of course, give the opportunity for people watching: when we visited, there were people working with their laptops on some tables while others were having business meetings. Then there are the photographs, currently (though only for a few more days), an exhibition of photographs from the 60s and 70s by John Bulmer.

The coffee is supplied by Redemption Roasters and I enjoyed a dark, toffee like espresso with a very good slice of a chocolate brownie (confidently nut free). Several types of milk are on offer for milk based coffee drinks as well as a selection of cold drinks, together with a wide variety of cakes. It is definitely a place to return to when in the area.

coffee the Observatory, TLR
Cakes on the counter at The Observatory. Note the twin lens reflex “camera” on the shelf behind the counter.

While waiting for my coffee, I noticed the grain of the wood in the table. Dark, almost parallel lines on a lighter wood. You can see it in the photograph. Looking around the café, such parallel lines were everywhere. Planks of wood lined the walls, vertical, parallel lines stretching up to the ceiling. In the room towards the back of the café, the ceiling also had parallel lines on it which, given I was viewing them from a distance, appeared to converge with the effect of perspective. It is difficult to know whether these effects were deliberate in a gallery/café so dedicated to an exploration of the visual but I like to think that the small twin lens reflex camera on a shelf (which sadly turned out to be a pencil sharpener on sale) was a nod to this idea shifting lines of sight and perspective.

By definition, two parallel lines are lines that will never meet, no matter how far the lines are extended. If they were to meet at any point, they would not be parallel. This offers a way of measuring the distance to stars as well as providing food for thought on our way of seeing our place in the universe. The idea is that of parallax. If you were to measure the relative position of a star against the background of stars at midnight in June, and then go back to measure the same star relative to the same background at midnight six months later in December, you may find that the star seemed to have moved. The amount it moves, its parallax, is determined by how close the star is to the earth (have a look at the diagram).

parallax and coffee
As the point of view moves around the Sun (represented here by a V60), the closest coffee bean appears to shift relative to the background coffee beans.
The lower two diagrams are an attempt to see things from the perspective of the Lego person separated by “6 months” distance.

Take as an example the star Sirius. Located relatively close to us at a mere 8.6 light year distance, Sirius has a parallax of 0.38 arc seconds or, equivalently, about 0.0002 of the angular diameter of the moon viewed from Earth¹. Stars that are further away are going to have an even smaller parallax until the parallax becomes so small as to be difficult to measure. Even for nearby stars such as Sirius, the small size of the effect meant that it wasn’t until 1838 that it was first measured. Which may be part of the reason that the theory of Aristarchus (310-230BCE) never caught on when it was proposed.

Aristarchus was an early proponent of the idea that the Earth went around the Sun (and not the other way around). The Greek’s realised that if Aristarchus was correct, there should be a parallax effect for the stars viewed at different times of the year (every 3 months)¹. Unfortunately, the Greeks also considered that the stars belonged to a thin shell, so effectively all the stars were at the same distance from the Earth. Consequently, the parallax effect that they looked for (if Aristarchus was correct) was for two stars on that shell to move first towards then away from each other as the Earth circled the Sun¹. They never observed this effect and so considered the heliocentric theory “inconsistent with observations”¹. Although we would now say that the fact that they didn’t observe any such shift is consistent with the huge distances to the stars (and therefore small shifts) involved, for the ancient Greeks it was a problem. As Archimedes commented, if Aristarchus’ theory had been true, it would mean that the universe was much bigger than they at that time thought.

Guardini has written about the effect on the human psyche of this changing idea of the universe and our own place in it (from the Greek’s idea of finite and limited, to finite with a God outside, to infinite and back towards finite but incredibly large). Do our ideas, our models, about the universe affect not only how we interpret the experimental evidence we see, but also our way of being, our behaviour towards our fellow humans and our planet?

Viewing things from a different angle, seeing the effect of a change of line of sight, it brings us right back to the photography in the gallery and the twin lens camera on the shelf. There are certainly many things to contemplate while enjoying a coffee at The Observatory. Which means a second espresso should definitely be a possibility.

You can view some street photography, including some photographed with a twin lens Microcord TLR camera on Artemisworks gallery here.

The Observatory is at 64 Marchmont St, WC1N 1AB

¹Astronomy, the evolving universe (6th edition), Michael Zeilik, John Wiley & Sons, 1991

 

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Coffee review Observations

Bright Lights at Bloomsbury Coffee House

Bloomsbury coffee house sign
A wooden sign advertising a coffee house. What makes a modern coffee house?

The coffee houses of the eighteenth century were places where ideas were debated, new innovations created and, of course, coffee consumed. What would a modern day equivalent look like?

Bloomsbury Coffee House is in a basement on Tavistock Place. It is ideally located close to a few universities and was busy but not crowded when we arrived one afternoon during the week. There are two large rooms forming the café with several tables and artwork dotted around the room. In the warmer months, there are also a couple of tables outside in the little terraced area by the steps leading down to the basement. Many people inside that day were on laptops (there is free wifi), some were involved in conversation either with each other or through the laptop. Presentations were being discussed, new ideas bounced around. It is possible that sometimes, when thinking about past coffee houses we can be tempted to focus on what has been lost (in terms of conversation and debate) rather than what has been retained in a modern manifestation (such as idea creation and discussion via Skype, from within the coffee house). At the Bloomsbury Coffee House that day I had an espresso (Allpress) and a cinnamon bun while there were also a variety of milks on offer for other espresso based drinks. These were all a significant improvement on the coffee that was served in the establishments of the past.

lattice structures ceiling bloomsbury coffee house
A 2D square lattice pattern on the ceiling. But what is the smallest repeating pattern that you can see? Is it centred on the large squares or the small squares?

Each table was individual, some reminding me of old school desks, while the ceiling was plastered with a 2D square lattice pattern. Staring at the ceiling, prompted the question, was it the large squares or the small squares that formed the repeating unit of the structure? Quickly this made me think about Polonium. When thinking about how atoms form 3D crystal structures, we sometimes naively draw a cube with an atom at each corner. In fact, this arrangement (the simple cubic structure) is quite unstable (try stacking oranges on top of each other so they form a cube) and, for elements that do form into cubic crystal structures, a more common form of base unit is a so-called face centred or body centred cubic. One element that does form a simple cubic structure though is polonium, an element that is probably more famous for being the poison used in the Litvinenko case a few years ago.

However, an alternative train of thought was suggested by the blackboard on one of the walls of the room. A colourful message announced that the Bloomsbury Coffee House had won a Time Out Love London award. The writing, in red and blue, was a little tricky to read from the back of the room. With the lighting, the red appeared slightly brighter and more visible than the blue. Perhaps coincidentally, this is the correct way round (in terms of order of brightness) for an odd optical effect that happens as the light fades towards evening (and, in a connected manner, why it is hard to find a matching pair of socks in the dark).

writing on the wall
The blackboard at Bloomsbury Coffee House

In order to ‘see’, the eye uses a series of cells called rods and cones. The rods are the more light sensitive and more plentiful (there are more than 100 million in a human eye) but they do not have any mechanism to detect colour. Instead, they show a good response over the entire visible range with a peak response rate at ~507 nm¹ which corresponds to a blue wavelength. The cones by contrast give us the ability to discern colour. We have blue, green and red sensitive cones which show responses that peak in the blue, green and red parts of the visible spectrum respectively. The problem with the cones is that they do not respond very well in low level lighting conditions. Hence, during the day, in normal lighting conditions, the cones are active and our eyes (usually) show a peak response to yellow-green light at 555 nm. As the light falls and twilight and darkness comes in, the cones cease to work leaving only the rods so our eye’s peak response shifts to light with a blue wavelength. Subsequently, a bright red rose seen during the day may appear dimmer than the green leaves in the evening. A sea of blue and red flowers may shift from appearing bright red to bright blue as night falls.

Unfortunately, Bloomsbury Coffee House closes at 6pm which, during summer, is too early for us to see whether we can see this effect ourselves. But if you are lucky enough to have access to a garden or park where there are red flowers and are able to sit and watch them as night falls, do observe and see if you can see this shift in apparent brightness for yourself.

Bloomsbury Coffee House is at 20 Tavistock Place, WC1H 9RE

¹The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol I

Categories
Allergy friendly Coffee review General Observations

Getting to the point at Sharps

coffee and Caffeine at Sharps
Coffee at Sharps Coffee Bar.

There will be plenty to notice at any café that shares space with a barber’s shop. And so it was the case at Sharps Coffee Bar on Windmill Street. The café is at the front of the barber’s shop which is separated from the tables by a glass wall: people watching in a type of human goldfish bowl. The counter was on the left of the shop as we walked in and it was great to see that in addition to the usual espresso based drinks there was an aeropress coffee available (as well as batch brew). Given the chemistry of pre-brewed coffee, I tend to pass on batch brews though I am aware that there are many people who enjoy speciality coffee who will disagree with me. However, given that the barista on the day was “still perfecting” his aeropress recipe, I enjoyed instead a long black prepared with The Barn roasted beans.

The sign in the window suggested that “maintenance matters” which is something that I am sure that we can all agree on, whether it is on haircuts, coffee equipment or even equipment in a science lab. A stitch in time saves nine so they say. On the board listing the prices, it was good to see that Sharps coffee bar mentioned the use of almond milk. Although personally I generally drink black coffees, cross contamination can be an issue for allergy sufferers and so it is always helpful to be alert to the use of nut-based milks when they are used (you can read more here). Edibles were supplied by Kaffeine. Behind the bar there were a couple of trough-like sinks while the contrast in the wood and the tiling on either side of the bar provided another avenue of thought.

cacti in a row
Sign, window and cacti at Sharps Coffee Bar

In the window, a row of cacti caught my attention. Cacti seem known for two things. One is that they are (generally) prickly and the other that they are extremely water efficient.  But these two facts can also apparently be linked. Some cacti use their spikes or hairs to change the local atmosphere around them so that air is trapped in the hair or that air flow is reduced. Both of these measures would help to prevent water loss from the main body of the plant. It is an example of the structure of something affecting the environment around it. Similar effects can be seen on the hairs on a spiders legs which trap air allowing the spiders to survive if they are submerged as well as to waterproof the legs in more general times. Some plants similarly use hairs (and therefore the air trapped in them) to waterproof their leaves. The benefit of this for the plant is that waterproof leaves mean that drops of water roll off of them causing the leaves to be self-cleaning. This is an effect that people are trying to mimic in order to make self-cleaning surfaces for human use.

View of St Paul's Cathedral London
There is a whispering gallery in the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. An interplay between sound waves and the shape/size of the dome.

Structures can also be used to trap sound waves either deliberately with meta-materials or, almost accidentally such as the whispering galleries of cathedral domes. Moreover the hairs themselves can act as part of a sound detection system. Human ears for example have tiny hairs in the cochlea. As a sound comes in and these hairs vibrate, the movement of these hairs gets converted to a nerve impulse that we can eventually ‘hear’. Perhaps this could take us into a consideration of what hearing is, what sound is and, in a Berkeley-type way whether we actually experience anything outside of ourselves at all. However, more directly it takes us back to the barber’s shop and how evolution has resulted in a wide variety of structural adaptations that allow different life forms to live optimally in their environment.

And with that, it would probably be time to sit back and enjoy another coffee.

Sharps coffee bar is at 9 Windmill Street, W1T 2JF

Categories
Coffee review Observations Science history slow Tea

Pushing it at Lever and Bloom, Bloomsbury

Lever Bloom coffee
Lever and Bloom under a blue sky.

Does a take-away need to be rushed? A coffee so quick that there is ‘not enough time to prepare a flat white’? Are we always so preoccupied with the distractions of our day that we consume our coffee merely for the pleasant caffeine kick that it provides?

Lever and Bloom in Bloomsbury is a great example of why this does not have to be, indeed should not be the case. Since 2015, Lever and Bloom have been operating out of a cart on Byng Place close to UCL and a number of other research institutes. The character of the surroundings really does affect the space and both times I have been to Lever and Bloom I have either met interesting people in the queue or overheard snippets of intriguing conversation about history I know nothing about.

Coffee Bloomsbury reusable coffee cup
Long black in a keep-cup and telephone box in Byng Place.

It is easy to spot the coffee cart in the corner. Firstly, it is bright red and quite eye catching but secondly because of the queue forming in front of it. Don’t be put off though, the queue moves very quickly so you won’t wait long even if you are in a rush. Queueing however does give you an opportunity to peer into the cart. Space is used extremely efficiently. with each piece of equipment  apparently having its own perfect home. It reminded me of a childhood game of trying to fit in as many objects as possible into a matchbox. A cabinet on the table in front of the cart displays cakes including cinnamon rolls (sadly sold out by the time I arrived in the afternoon). It was also nice to see the number of people ahead of me in the queue who were using re-usable cups.

The lever of the name refers to the (Izzo Pompei) lever espresso machine that is used on the cart. It was fascinating to watch the ground beans being carefully tamped and the lever being pulled to prepare the espresso. Although there is some debate as to the optimum water pressure needed for preparing an espresso, the standard pressure is 9 Bar; water is pushed through the tamped grinds at nine times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. Watching these espressos being prepared reminded me of preparing ceramic samples of an interesting magnetic material a few years ago. We were interested in the electrical properties of a class of materials called manganites. To prepare the materials for measurement we first had to grind the pre-cursor powders (but with a pestle and mortar, no burr grinders) and then, after a couple of further preparatory steps, press them into a pellet ready for firing in the oven. The machine used for pressing the pellets had a lever, not dissimilar to that on the espresso machines and yet, the pressure that we used for the pellets was roughly 1000 Bar. This high pressure was needed so that dense pellets of manganite material would be formed when we heated it in the oven (typically at 1200 ºC). Just as a good espresso depends on the pressure and then the temperature and time of extraction, so the properties of the pellet would be affected by the pressure and then temperature and time of firing in the oven.

Portland Stone fossils
Fossils in Portland Stone. It is astonishing what is revealed when you slow down and notice the buildings around you.

Similar effects affect the rocks of the earth, something that is particularly visible in the area around Lever and Bloom. A geological walking tour around Byng Place, Tottenham Court Road and towards the British Museum illustrates this particularly well. Behind Lever and Bloom, the church of Christ the King is built from Bath Stone. An oolitic limestone, this type of rock is formed of compressed sand and bits of shell. Much as the manganite samples of my study before they were fired in the oven but of a more interesting colour. Heading towards Gower St and the impressive UCL building is made of Portland Stone. Another limestone, this building material is a goldmine for urban fossil explorers. Continuing the walk, on Tottenham Court Road, the Mortimer Arms pub is fronted by quartzite while Swedish Green Marble adorns 90 Tottenham Court Road. Quartzite and Marble are both types of metamorphic rock, formed by pressing together different precursor materials at high pressure and temperature. Other types of marble can be seen on the tour, suggesting the influence of pressure and temperature of formation on the rock structure as well as the type of precursor rock.

It would seem that such a walking tour is perfectly timed for a longer style of coffee, perhaps a latte (in a re-usable cup of course) from such a centrally located place as Lever and Bloom. And of course, assuming you are using a re-usable, there is even more to ponder. The pressure and temperature during the manufacture of the re-usable cup would have affected the properties of the cup (or in my case, glass).

Let me know if you spot any interesting rocks or fossils during your time at Lever and Bloom but whatever you do, I hope that you can enjoy your coffee and then slow down to enjoy it a bit more.

Lever and Bloom is at Byng Place, WC1E 7JJ

Categories
Coffee review General slow Sustainability/environmental Tea

Coffee and a horse box at Blue Tin, Oxfordshire

coffee Nuffield Oxfordshire Blue Tin
The cafe is in here. The new farm shop at Blue Tin.

Blue Tin is not an easy café to find, one that you can wander into just off the street. In fact, although it serves coffee and cake, Blue Tin is not really a café at all but a friendly place for a drink attached to a farm shop. Open to walkers and passing cyclists, horse riders and drivers, Blue Tin seems to be almost in the middle of nowhere. Approximately 4km by road from Nuffield, Blue Tin can be found just off a single lane country road. You will know when you actually arrive at the farm because of the sign and the box advertising fresh eggs (complete with honesty box for when the shop is closed).

We first came across Blue Tin (when it was a shop in a shed rather than a shop/café in a building) while walking in the area. There are some good walks in the area which can be very pretty when the bluebells are out and so it is well worth combining a visit to the café with a walk in the Oxfordshire countryside. Despite only opening in December 2017, the café associated with Blue Tin has put a lot of effort into ensuring that their coffee is ethically sourced, great tasting and locally roasted. The coffee is roasted by Horsebox Coffee and is of course also available to purchase in the shop. The espresso based drinks use the Dark Horse espresso blend (though I wasn’t sure whether this was occasionally rotated when the seasonal espresso is available). We had an Americano and a latte. The Americano indeed had the chocolate notes described on the coffee bag, while the milk of the latte really complemented the espresso base. Cakes are also available though we didn’t try on this occasion.

Provenance Information Blue Tin, old board, no coffee info
On the wall of the cafe is a schematic showing where each product sold in the shop originates. Seen here is the earlier version that does not include the coffee (roasted within 5 miles). Everything is local and the meat is particularly local having been brought up in the farm next to the shop.

There is plenty of space to sit down inside and contemplate the shop while enjoying your coffee in this welcoming environment. The arrangement also gives you time to consider the farm and space for your mind to wander. One place my mind was wandering that day was to the importance of our beliefs in our decision making, even while they are informed by science.

For example, it is often said that we could significantly help climate change by becoming vegetarian or including one meat free day per week in our diet. In a 2013 paper, the authors calculated the emissions associated with farming, producing, packaging and storing 66 categories of food item that were sold in a (modelled) medium sized supermarket. In order to calculate this various assumptions about the produce had to be made¹.

To summarise the paper (though it is well worth taking the time to read it), the study suggested that avoiding meat altogether could reduce our individual carbon footprint due to food by 35%. However even introducing a meat free day (combined with a switch to poultry rather than beef and significant reduction in the amount of food we waste/packaging used) could introduce a reduction of 26%.

Horsebox coffee Oxfordshire
Americano, Latte and shop. The coffee-space at Blue Tin farm shop, Oxfordshire

Does the science therefore “say” that we should all go vegetarian? It is worth looking more closely at the paper and considering our own belief systems. In the report, beef had a total CO2 equivalent emissions of 25.13 Kg per kg of food¹. One suggestion of the authors was to swap beef for poultry. Poultry has a total emissions of 4.05 Kg CO2 equivalent per Kg. But looking through the table of calculated emissions for each food type, “spirits and liqueurs” had a total emissions of 3.16 Kg CO2e per Kg. Perhaps (hopefully) you could say you would take a long time to drink a kg of spirits, but even wine has 2.41 Kg CO2e per Kg. As a rough estimate, 1 bottle of wine (750 ml) is 3/4 Kg, so the bottle of wine with dinner is contributing roughly equivalently to the shared roast chicken. There are nutritional arguments for eating meat. Can we say the same of drinking wine? What of coffee? (not included in the table I’m relieved to say!)

The study shows the quantity of emissions associated with each type of food stuff. It does not show us how to act. Each decision we make (eliminate meat/go teetotal/all things in moderation) is based on what we believe about the world. Even the idea that it would be a good thing to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in order to try to limit climate change is a moral one, not a scientific one. These decisions depend on what we think is ‘good’, what is ‘bad’, what life is about. In short it depends on our beliefs about the world and our place in it rather than purely the facts. These are philosophical, or dare I say it, even religious questions. Science can inform us of the damage that we are doing but it cannot help us to decide whether that matters, nor even if it does matter, what we should do about it.

Interior of Blue Tin with flower
You won’t need the sugar. Another view of the cafe at Blue Tin.

Whether we decide to buy better quality² meat less frequently, go vegan or even do nothing are not decisions that we are making entirely based on the science. Although informed by the science they are nonetheless based also on our existing beliefs about the way the world is and the way the world should be. We may decide for example that, while we should reduce our consumption of “cheap” beef/imported lamb, we should take care to buy more expensive meat from somewhere that takes care of their animals throughout the farming (and slaughtering) process but eat it less often. Depending on the rest of our diet, this could similarly reduce our food-related greenhouse gas emissions (if for example we mostly ate vegetarian with occasional meat consumption). We may similarly decide that eating meat is intrinsically wrong and so go entirely vegetarian.

These are choices we make, informed by the science but based on our ideas of morality. They are not easy choices nor are they choices we will necessarily agree with each other about. To make these choices requires time set aside to think about what matters to us, about what we believe in. And this means that there is no intrinsic conflict between science and religious belief any more than there is a conflict between science and the decisions we make in general. We need science to inform our beliefs but we need also to recognise the role of our beliefs (conscious or subconscious) in our decision making.

In short, we need to slow down, pause and really think about things. And where better to do so than in quiet and comfortable places with good coffee (and cake) such as Blue Tin?

 

¹Interestingly, the authors assumed that for beef, the effective emissions were increased owing to deforestation and land clearance that is associated with beef production in some places. If this is not accounted for, the effective emissions from beef are still calculated to dwarf much of the other food stuffs but not by quite so much. The footprint would therefore be less for beef raised on an existing local form, slaughtered and purchased locally. Similarly, the ‘vegetarian’ diet that was modelled by the authors contained dairy (with similarly high emissions as beef).

²Again ‘quality’ is a subjective term that cannot be easily ‘scientifically’ quantified, instead it is argued based on what we believe ‘good’ means. Do I mean that the animal had healthy conditions during life? Was well cared for? That it tastes good? That I could speak to the people who farmed the animals? I’ve left it deliberately slightly ambiguous here.

Blue Tin Produce is at Garsons Farm, Ipsden, OX10 6QU

Categories
Coffee review General Observations Science history Tea

Time standing still at VCR, Kuala Lumpur

VCR chalkboard
A trip down memory lane via a new cafe. VCR in Bangsar, KL

One of the first science-based talks I gave was about how VCR tapes worked. Depending on how you viewed it (and whether you had to listen), this was either an achievement given that I was at school and didn’t really understand magnetism nor magnetoresistive devices, or a thing to be suffered through (for much the same reasons). So when I learned that a new café called VCR had opened in Bangsar in Kuala Lumpur, it prompted a series of fond (and a few embarrassing) memories.

Moving on, it is clear that this second branch of VCR (the first is in Pudu, in the main part of KL), aims to provoke such memories of times past. From the name of the wifi to the pulleys behind the counter and the wooden screen at the back of the café, various details around the café pull your memory in different directions. However the coffee is very much in the present. With three types of coffee available to try as a pour over as well as the standard espresso based drinks, this café has a lot to offer. The coffee is roasted by VCR themselves in their Pudu branch. There is also an extensive food menu with an interesting Chawan mushi as well as an intricate avocado toast (topped with pomegranate seeds, toasted quinoa and feta).

coffee at VCR Bangsar
Coffee and pour over jug. But is the number 68 or 89?

The friendly baristas were happy to advise on which coffee to match with which brewing device (though there seemed a marked preference for V60s on the days I visited). In total I tried 4 pour-overs, one with the Kalita Wave and the others by V60. These coffees were all excellent but very different. A couple were fruity, one was sweet and full bodied, one reminded me a bit of the local fruit durian, not I hasten to add because of its taste, but because the aroma from the cup was so different from the flavour of the drink. It was a great privilege to be able to try these different coffees consecutively and to really experience the variety of flavours in coffee. Great care was taken while making the pour over before it was brought over to the table, together with a jug of water, it also seemed to me that the baristas kept a discreet eye on me afterwards to ensure I enjoyed the coffee. So it was a good experience to have had the opportunity both to enjoy one of those pour overs and to observe the people and the surroundings of VCR when I had to wait for 1 hour for someone with no phone and no book. If you get the opportunity to do this I would very much recommend it. Find a comfortable café, order a coffee and then sit, without distractions, and watch what your mind notices and where it wanders for an hour.

An obvious place for a mind to wander would be to the mechanism of tape recording (and why mini-disks are the superior recording medium for the elegance of the physics involved). However, in an hour a mind wanders far further than the name. Supporting the cakes (and a display case for the 2nd place award of the brewers cup), was a table with a concertina type decoration around its edge. Was this a nod to the Kalita Wave brewing device? This is a significant difference between the V60 and the Kalita Wave: the ridges (or wave pattern) on the filter of the latter. How does coffee flow past these ridges? Does this difference in flow dynamics make a difference to the taste of the coffee?

variables grind size, pour rate, pour vorticity
It seems that there would be a lot of physics to observe in the fluid flow in a Kalita Wave filter.

A few weeks previously a friend had made a (lovely) coffee with her Kalita Wave. It was interesting to note the different dose of coffee she used and the way the grinds built up in the ridges (compared with my ‘normal’ V60). Why do the grinds end up in the ridges? Why is there a layer of dust on the blades of a fan? Why do some corners of a building collect more dust or leaves than others? Are these questions related and does it change the flavour of the coffee in the Kalita?

In fact, there are many subtleties in understanding how fluids move around solid objects. One of these is that at the interface of the fluid with the solid, the fluid does not flow at all, there is a stationary layer. Known as a boundary layer or Prandtl boundary layer (after the person who first suggested their existence, Ludwig Prandtl), realising these layers existed revolutionised the field of aerodynamics. The problem had been how to model the drag experienced by a solid object in a fluid flow. Although perhaps only of academic interest in terms of the flow of coffee around a Kalita filter or a spoon, by the end of the nineteenth century and particularly, with the invention of airplanes, how to calculate fluid (i.e air) flow around a solid (i.e. wing) object became very important for practical reasons.

vortices, turbulence, coffee cup physics, coffee cup science
Another cool consequence of boundary layers:
Vortices created at the walls of a mug when the whole cup of coffee is placed on a rotating object (such as a record player).

Prandtl introduced the concept of a boundary layer in 1904. The idea allowed physicists to treat the main body of the moving fluid separately to the layer, very close to the solid, that was dominated by friction with the solid. This meant that the Navier-Stokes equations (that are used to describe fluid flow and ordinarily do not have an analytical solution) are simplified for this boundary layer and can be quantitatively solved. Although simple, by the 1920s Prandtl’s layer (and consequently the solvable equations) were being used to quantitatively predict the skin friction drag produced by airplanes and airships.

The boundary layer allows us to understand how vortices form behind cylinders or around the corners of buildings. I suspect a mix of the boundary layer, turbulence caused by the coffee going over many of the ridges and the brick like stacking/jamming of the coffee grains would combine to explain the difference in the grind shape around the Kalita Wave and the V60 filters. What this does to the flavour of the coffee and whether better brewing would involve more agitation, I will leave to Kalita Wave coffee lovers to investigate. And when you do, I would love to hear of your results, either here on Facebook or Twitter.

 

Categories
Coffee review Observations slow Sustainability/environmental

Waiting for the drop at Kurasu, Kyoto (Singapore)

Kurasu Kyoto Singapore, coffee Raffles City
The sign towards the entrance at Kurasu Kyoto, Singapore

Kurasu Kyoto, in Singapore, was recommended to me as a great place to experience pour-over coffee. Although they will serve espresso based drinks too, it is the pour over coffee for which they are famous. The Singapore branch is at the front of a shared working space in an office block. Entering from the street, you have to go up one level before the smell of the coffee will guide you to the café.

Ordinarily, coffee chains would not be featured on Bean Thinking. However, despite it’s name, this is a ‘chain’ of only two outlets, the original branch in Kyoto, Japan and this one in Singapore. The menu featured several coffees with their differing tasting notes together with a few other drinks. Coffee is shipped from Japan weekly as well as being locally roasted in Singapore. It is very much a place to enjoy your coffee while sitting on the comfortable chairs before getting back to work (or perhaps, a place to meet potential colleagues over a refreshing cup of coffee). And it is highly likely you will enjoy your coffee which is prepared for you as you wait.

coffee machine, V60 Kalita
The bar and some of the coffee equipment in the cafe space at Kurasu Kyoto Singapore

There is no hint of automation here. Each cup of coffee is prepared carefully and individually by the barista behind the bar. V60 or Kalita, it was somewhat mesmerising to watch the pour over being prepared, rhythmically, carefully, by hand. Indeed, automation seems almost alien to this place where the act of making coffee is truly artful. Once prepared, the coffee is brought to your table in a simple ceramic mug for you to taste for yourself and see how your tasting notes compare.

As I was watching, two thoughts occurred to me, the first of a directly scientific nature, the second more about our society. Firstly watching the barista slowly prepare the pour over, it is difficult not to be reminded of the pitch drop experiment.

You may remember the story from 2013 and then again in 2014. Two experiments that had been set up in 1944 and 1927 respectively finally showed results. The experiments were (indeed are, they are still going) very similar and concerned watching pitch (which is a derivative of tar) drop from a funnel. Pitch is used to waterproof boats and appears to us almost solid at room temperature although it is actually a liquid but with an extremely high viscosity. To put this into perspective, at room temperature coffee has a viscosity similar to water at about 0.001 Pa s, liquid honey has a viscosity of about 10 Pa s, but this tar has a viscosity of 20 000 000 Pa s. The experiments involved pouring this tar into a funnel and then waiting, and waiting, for it to drip. Both experiments seem to drip only approximately once a decade but until 2013 (and 2014 for the other experiment), the actual drop had never been seen. Both experiments are now building their droplets again and we await the next drop in the 2020s.

Imagine waiting that long for a drip coffee.

coffee Kurasu Kyoto Singapore
Apparent simplicity. The coffee at Kurasu Kyoto Singapore

But then a second thought, there is currently a lot of angst, particularly about automation and our environmental and/or political situations, as if they are something from outside ourselves being imposed upon us. To some extent it is true that we are not in control over many things happening around us. But in our feeling of powerlessness, are we resigning more than we ought to of our responsibility for the power that we do have? It was something that deeply concerned Romano Guardini in his essay “Power and Responsibility”¹. To use the example of automation and the pour over. Guardini argues that people become poorer as they become more distant from the results of their work (e.g. by automating the pour over coffee with a machine). And that the better the machine, the “fewer the possibilities for personal creativeness”¹ that the barista would have. For Guardini, this has consequences for the human being for both barista and customer. The barista clearly loses the element of their creativity when preparing a pour over with a machine but the customer too is affected by the loss of a personal contact, possible only through individually created things. Rather than celebrating each other as individuals we become consumers with tastes “dictated by mass production”¹ and people who produce only what the “machine allows”. To respond to the challenges of our contemporary society involves discovering where we each have responsibility and exercising it, no matter how small or large that responsibility seems (to us) to be.

Which is somehow resonant with the interview that one of the Kyoto based baristas at Kurasu Kyoto gave that was recently circulated by Perfect Daily Grind. Asked what was her preferred brewing method, she replied it was the V60 because of the control that the individual barista could gain over the flavour of the cup merely by tweaking some of the details of the pour. A knowledgable art rather than a technology. And it is precisely this knowledgable art that you can see carefully and excellently practised in the Singapore branch.

Kurasu Kyoto (Singapore) is at 331 North Bridge Road, Odeon Towers, #02-01

“Power and Responsibility” in “The End of the Modern World”, Romano Guardini. ISI books, (2001)

 

Categories
Coffee review Observations Science history

Quantum physics from your (re-usable) cup at Lost Sheep, Canterbury

Coffee in Canterbury, keep cup
Finding the sheep. Lost Sheep coffee in Canterbury. Note the lighting.

I have long been looking forward to trying the Lost Sheep coffee pod in Canterbury. How would the reality compare to the friendly and knowledgable impression they give on social media? Being mostly a take-away outlet, what was their attitude to the disposable coffee cup problem? We had ensured that we had packed our keep-cups when we left London so that we could enjoy a coffee without having to use a disposable cup. Little did we know.

The sheep was visible as we approached the Lost Sheep coffee pod from the direction of the High Street. Adjacent to the pod, people were drinking their coffee while standing at the chip-board standing-bar nearby. In front of us in the queue, another customer was buying what appeared to be his usual coffee in his re-usable cup. The conversation between the customer and barista showing that cafés that help build communities do not have to come in standard formats. ‘Pods’ can work as well as cafés inside buildings (though the Lost Sheep has one of those too over in Ashford). The queue ahead of us enabled us to take more time to study the environment of the Lost Sheep.

Interestingly, a set of ceramic cups were placed above the espresso machine. Although we saw none in use, presumably this means that should you wish to enjoy your coffee at the bars, you can do so, even if you have forgotten your reusable. What a great feature for a take-away coffee place. The friendliness of this café was apparent as I presented my keep-cup for my long black. Commenting on the design of the cup (glass with a cork handling ring, perfect in size for the coffees I mostly drink), we continued to enjoy a short conversation about keep-cups and how nice the size was for the coffee. The coffee was amazingly fruity, a sweet, full bodied brew roasted locally in Whitstable. It was great to be able to enjoy this interesting coffee while wandering as a tourist in my old home-town.

Coffee Canterbury Sheep
Behind the sheep. At least it is easy to spot from all angles.

Before leaving the Sheep though, we did notice the lighting. A yellow hue from the lights immediately above the espresso machine with a whiter, harsher light from the luminescent strip light at the edge of the pod (a dull sunlight surrounding the rest of the outdoor space on this cloudy day). Coals are red hot, the Sun appears more yellow, how does colour vary with temperature? And how does this link to an old story that links quantum physics (very quickly) to your coffee cup.

How things absorb and emit light and electromagnetic radiation has been a subject of study really since white light was split into its different colours and then it was found that there was ‘invisible’ light beyond the blue and far from the red. It was known in the nineteenth century that things (which physicists tend to like to call ‘bodies’ for reasons that become clearer later) that absorbed all the light incident on them re-emitted the light unequally. As they absorbed all the incident light, they could be called a ‘black bodies’. People knew that the radiated light from a black body formed a spectrum that depended upon the temperature of the body. For most things that we encounter on earth, such as the coffee cup, their temperature means that they will emit more strongly in the infra-red, we can feel the heat coming off of them but we can’t see it. But as things get hotter they start to glow ‘red-hot’ and then if we heated them still further, they would glow with different colours.

The stars show this with the colour of the star being an indicator of the temperature of the star. Stars that are very hot shine blue, those that are cooler (but still thousands of degrees Celsius) appear to us as more white. Although these stars are emitting light at all frequencies, they show a characteristic peak in emissions for one frequency. The corresponding “black body spectrum” was very well known in the nineteenth century but the problem was that classical physics just could not explain it. Attempts were made to describe the curve but when it came down to it, if the energy (ie radiation) was described using classical physics, the shape of the curve could not be explained. While classical physics predicted the shape of the curve very well at long wavelengths (reds, infra-reds), there was a failure at shorter wavelengths. And not just a failure, it was a catastrophe: the theory predicted that an infinite amount of energy would be emitted at the low wavelengths. Clearly this is wrong, nothing can emit an infinite amount of energy and so for this reason, the problem was described as the “ultra-violet catastrophe“.

Sun, heat, nuclear fusion
The Sun is our nearest star and source of heat. But what links coffee to the Sun? It turns out a great many things of which this is just one. Image © NSO/AURA/NSF

A solution came when Max Planck changed the assumptions about how energy was emitted or absorbed. Rather than the continuous emission that was expected in classical physics, Planck reasoned that energy was emitted in discrete packets and that, crucially, these “quanta” were dependent on the frequency of the light being emitted. Planck’s formulation allowed for a mathematical description of the curve. Finally the shape of the black body spectrum could be explained, but it came at quite a cost; it came at the expense of classical physics. To use Planck’s formula meant abandoning some aspects of classical physics in favour of a new quantum model and it meant leaving the absolutes of classical mechanics and entering into a new statistical world. This change didn’t come easily even to Planck who had been motivated to study physics by the absolute answers that the theory of thermodynamics seemed to provide. He wrote, regarding his own black body theory:

“… the whole procedure was an act of despair because a theoretical interpretation had to be found at any price, no matter how high that might be”

In some ways, that feeling that you experience while warming your hands on a cup of steaming coffee while basking in the late afternoon sunshine is an intrinsically quantum experience. Neither the infra-red heat of your cup nor the colour spectrum of the sun could be explained using purely classical physics. So while taking time to appreciate the heat of your coffee, perhaps it’s worth remembering that this feeling that you are experiencing comes as a result of the same physics as determines the hot glow of stars and the cold microwave glow of the universe. The coffee heating your hands is indicating that the world is stranger than you may think, a quantum world being revealed to you all the while you sip your coffee.

Lost Sheep coffee is in St George’s Lane, CT1 2SY