Tag: Amoret

Espressos in the evening

Where it all happens. Amoret Coffee in Notting Hill.

Two weeks ago saw the latest in the series of “coffee and science” evenings at Amoret Coffee in Notting Hill. Designed to be informal (and hopefully conversational), each evening explores a different aspect of the interaction and connections between coffee and science (or more specifically, physics). This time, we were also very fortunate to be joined by Ricardo of La Lomita coffee farm in Columbia.

Last time we had investigated foam and so this time we looked more at the base of the cappuccino: espressos. We started off with Sadiq of Amoret preparing a pour over (this time of an Ethiopian) in order for us to feel coffee focussed before leaping into a discussion of the extraction of espressos. And an experiment! How does the extraction of the espresso vary with the strength? We were exploring the extraction-strength relation described on Barista Hustle. Three espressos were prepared by Sadiq: one that was spot on, one that was under extracted and one that was left for too long to percolate through the puck. How did they taste and compare? While various participants took to the very important, but ultimately subjective, taste tests, Sadiq used the Total Dissolved Solids meter to explore how ‘strong’ the coffee was in terms of the percentage of dissolved solids. The extraction on the other hand is a function of the time of the brew and as more water goes through the espresso puck and the shot pull time gets longer, the strength of the coffee (as measured by the percentage total dissolved solids) can get relatively lower as the espresso yield (the size of the drink) gets larger.

straw, water, glass, refraction — The total dissolved solids meter uses the different refractive indexes of coffee and water to measure the amount of coffee dissolved in the beverage. The refractive index is what causes a straw to appear to bend when it is put in a glass of water.

A note on the physics here: the total dissolved solids meter uses the refractive index of the coffee to evaluate the ‘strength’. According to Illy*, the refractive index of a strong espresso is 1.341 at 20C. In comparison water has a refractive index (at 20C) of 1.333. Assuming light enters the coffee at an angle of 20 degrees, this means that the difference in the refraction of the light between coffee and ordinary water is 14.78 – 14.87 = -0.09 degrees. A pretty sensitive meter.

We followed this up with an exploration of crema. What, if anything, does crema tell you about a coffee? Does it even matter? I was impressed by the fact that some members of the group could recognise the Nicaraguan from the Ethiopian espresso just from the way it looked; the Nicaraguan had a different crema effect and coloration than the Ethiopian. Among other factors, the colour of the crema will be influenced by the number of suspended small particles in the coffee. A detail that brought us back to a link with Prof Jan Cilliers who had come along last month. A review paper on the science of cremas included a reference to Jan’s work on froth flotation. A connection between coffee cremas and the froth flotation technique used in mining, an excellent point for an evening of interconnectedness!

The ancient Greeks considered the circle to be the perfect shape. I'd suggest they were nearly right. The perfect shape has to be a cylinder. — The ancient Greeks considered the circle to be the perfect shape. I’d suggest they were nearly right. The perfect shape has to be a cylinder.

By this time we had moved upstairs at Amoret and the discussion continued about extraction techniques and percolation. Which linked very nicely to the work that Ricardo of La Lomita is doing at his coffee farm in Columbia. Ricardo uses biochar around his younger plants. Biochar is charcoal, formed by burning old plant matter (in Ricardo’s case, old coffee trees) in a low oxygen environment. This leaves the carbon of the trees intact and so acts as a way of sinking carbon (for many years) into the soil and avoiding its escape as CO2 into the atmosphere. In addition to this, the percolative structure of the charcoal traps nutrients within the structure giving the coffee plants every chance of success in their growth. As a last point, the way that the biochar holds and stores water (think about how an espresso puck remains damp or a V60 filter keeps the water for an age), means that the coffee plants are more resistant to drought, which is an increasing problem for coffee farms in a time of climate change.

More evenings are planned for early in 2020, do join us if you can. There were some excellent suggestions for topics for future events, so together with a few that we were thinking about already, there is plenty to think about for next year! However, if you have a question about the physics of coffee, have noticed something in coffee that you would like to explore or just generally want to think more about one or another aspect of coffee, do tweet, FB or email me your suggestions. Looking forward to 2020 already.

*Illy and Viani (Eds), “Espresso Coffee”, 2nd Ed (2005)

Tags Amoret, biochar, coffee and science, Coffee at Amoret, crema, Darcy, espressos, Extraction yield, La Lomita, percolation, refractometer

Uncategorized

Frothy physics for a coffee & science evening

Post author By beanthinking
Post date October 2, 2019
No Comments on Frothy physics for a coffee & science evening

A full line up of milk froth! How did each type of milk compare? And why….?

Last Tuesday saw the first of what will hopefully be an autumn-winter series of “coffee & science evenings” at Amoret Speciality Coffee in Notting Hill. These evenings are designed to be conversational; spaces where people can get together and chat about the strange things that they have observed in their coffee (or perhaps the common things that link to stranger things).

The event last Tuesday was in the latter category. We have all seen milk frothed, and noticed how it is different in different milk types (cow and plant), or seen how some foams seem to age while some seem to last forever. But why are some foams stable while others age? And what is the additive in the “Barista edition” oat milk that encourages better foaming and is connected with the foams that you can sometimes see washed up on the beach after a stormy sea?

The oat milk barista edition saw considerable ‘ripening’ of the foam structure as it aged. But does it matter?

We were joined for the evening by Prof. Jan Cilliers of the Earth Sciences department at Imperial College. Why would a professor of Earth Sciences be interested in foam? Well, part of his research involved understanding the use of foams in the froth flotation technique of mining. You can read more about that here. How does it link back to your cappuccino? You can watch some more milk foams age to investigate.

Finally we had the foam line up. Sadiq Merchant of Amoret prepared a series of 8 milk foams using homogenised full-fat milk, non-homogenised full fat and semi skimmed milk, the non-homogenised full fat milk that is used at Amoret, a lactose free milk, coconut milk, oat milk and oat milk Barista edition. The differences were fascinating. That the semi-skimmed milk produced a good stable foam was explicable with its fat-protein content, but why did the lactose-free milk foam so much? Regular oat milk performed fairly poorly: a foam that quickly aged and returned to liquid, but the barista edition oat milk did not last too long either. After 15 minutes there was considerable ‘ripening’ of the microfoam into larger bubbles (as you can see in the photo), but will most coffee drinkers be aware of this? Many of us will have finished our coffee within 15 minutes and be ordering our next one!

More events soon! Sign up to the events list or send an email to find out more.

Our next event on 22 October focuses more on the espresso part of the coffee. What makes a good crema? What are the connections between pulling an espresso and soil science, what can we learn about irrigation and soil ‘health’ by thinking about coffee? What about the grind size distribution? And can we make a connection between pulling an espresso and an old method of measuring blood pressure? (though the question here is not really can we, that answer is yes, the question is should we).

If you are in London, do come along on Tuesday 22nd October, you can sign up for that particular event here or sign up to the events list (to hear of future events) here. If you are not in London but still want to join the conversation, you are welcome to add comments here, head over to Facebook or see you on Twitter.

Tags Amoret, Amoret coffee Notting Hill, Bean Thinking Science and Coffee Evening, foams, frothing of lactose free milk, oat milk, oat milk barista edition, science and coffee evening, science in a cafe, what makes a good foam

Coffee Roasters Observations

An effective medium for coffee roasting?

Post author By beanthinking
Post date February 27, 2019
No Comments on An effective medium for coffee roasting?

Electrical boxes in Pulp by Papa Palheta KL. The moisture meter at Amoret is much smaller than these old boxes at this ex-printing works.

coffee bowl pour over — How would you measure the moisture content of a coffee bean?

Recently I had the pleasure of a tour of Amoret coffee in Notting Hill. In addition to discussing an upcoming event that Amoret are kindly hosting (an evening of coffee physics, sign up to the events list to find out more), it was great to see the coffee roaster that is installed there. Fascinating, with what looks to be a really interesting series of coffees lined up ready to roast. And in the course of all this, we came upon the moisture meter, which got me thinking.

Measuring the water content of green (and then roasted) coffee beans is quite critical to gaining an understanding of your roasting process apparently. Sitting on the shelf next to the roaster at Amoret, a small box contained an instrument designed for measuring exactly this. Although it looks as if it is a giant ice cream scoop with a central pillar in the middle, it is actually designed to measure the water content of the coffee beans capacitively. How does it work and, knowing how it works, can we make any predictions as to anomalous results that it may occasionally provide?

The simplest style of capacitor consists of two metallic plates with a gap between them. The capacitance changes depending on the size of the metallic plates, the distance between them and, crucially for this subject, the material that fills the space between the plates. When you apply an electric field between the two plates, the electric moments of the material within the capacitor will tend to align with the electric field. Different materials will react differently depending on their “polarisability”. You only have to think about how a stream of water reacts to a statically charged balloon to see why.

Pulp, Papa Palheta KL — Electrical boxes in Pulp by Papa Palheta KL. The moisture meter at Amoret is much smaller than these old boxes at this ex-printing works.

What this means in practise is that a capacitor formed of plates filled with water will have a different capacitance to the same capacitor filled with air. We say that the ‘permittivity’ of the air is different from the ‘permittivity’ of the water. Measuring the capacitance tells us the permittivity of the material between the plates and so whether the capacitor is filled with air or water. Now fairly obviously, it’s not quite as simple as this because a coffee bean is neither air nor fully water and the moisture meter is not two parallel plates. But in terms of the physics of the measurement, the shape doesn’t really matter here while another bit of physics called “effective medium” theory helps us with the fact that the bean is neither fully air nor fully water. Effective medium theory tells us that the relative permittivity of the mixture is simply proportional to the sum of the individual contributions from the polarisability of each set of molecules. So, merely changing the number of water molecules between the plates will change the capacitance. By knowing what the contribution of the dry beans are, we can calculate the moisture content of the coffee beans as a percentage. Or at least, the instrument can do this calculation internally and provide you with a number on the display.

But. This is what got me thinking about the measurements of the coffee at Amoret. Coffee beans come in a range of sizes and shapes, as you can see by taking a look at the online selection at Amoret (here). Some of these coffees are small, tending towards a more spherical shape while some are significantly larger and more conventionally bean shaped. Is it obvious that the moisture content measured for different coffees is directly comparable? This is not to diminish the use of the moisture meter. As a comparative tool to measure before and after roasting for example, it should be a fairly good indicator. But what should we expect for the absolute accuracy of the instrument? Is a 16% moisture content measured in a small bean really equal to a 16% moisture content measured in a big bean?

At first sight it may seem a silly question, after all, the moisture content is expressed as a percentage; why should size matter? But perhaps we could have a little further think about this. The moisture meter will be optimised for a dense packing of coffee beans. So if we filled it with small beans such that there were very few air gaps between the beans, we would expect a fairly accurate moisture content measurement. If on the other hand, the beans were larger such that there were quite a lot of air gaps between the beans, the actual volume fraction of water molecules in the meter would be reduced (16% of 100% full is greater than 16% of 90% full). And as the capacitance is directly related to the number of water molecules in the sample, the water content that was measured would be less than the true value in each individual bean. So this leads to my first question for roasters using capacitive moisture meters:

Do your large beans, that don’t pack well into the moisture meter, often show lower moisture contents than your smaller beans?

variables grind size, pour rate, pour vorticity — Coffee roasting is part-science, part-art and requires great skill and attention. But can thinking about a little extra physics help to understand some of what goes on with the process?

A second point is slightly more subtle. Consider that I had two beans of equal moisture content (%). But one of those beans packs more fully into the moisture meter than the other larger, more irregularly shaped bean. On roasting these beans, they both lost the same volume fraction of water so, say, they went from 16% to 12% water content on roasting. Would both beans show that they had lost the same amount of water?

We could start by thinking about packing these beans into the meter. The one that was densely packed would show a moisture content that was close to the real value (in our example 16%). The one that was less densely packed however would have a lower volume fraction of water and so show a lower water content. If we assume that the beans filled 90% of the space, the percentage that we measure would be 16% of 90% = 14.4%. On roasting, the two beans are again loaded into the meter and again the densely packed one will show a moisture content close to the real value (in our example 12%). The loosely packed one will show a moisture reading of 12% of 90% of the volume which is 10.8%. Crucially, if we are looking at moisture difference, the densely packed bean will appear to have lost more water (16% – 12% = 4%) than the loosely packed bean (14.4% – 10.8% = 3.6%). Which leads to my second question for roasters:

Do small beans that pack well into the moisture meter appear to lose more water for an optimised roasting profile than your larger, less densely packed beans?

Clearly, different beans will have different moisture contents anyway and so it may be difficult to discern any pattern between two specific coffees. The moisture readings may genuinely reflect the fact that the smaller beans have higher water content or vice versa. And also obviously, the measured moisture content is only one part of determining a successful roast profile. However the question is one of statistics. On average, do your larger, less well packed beans have a moisture level lower than you expect? And on average, do they seem to lose less water (measured capacitively) on roasting?

I’d be fascinated to hear your thoughts, here, on Twitter or Facebook.

Tags Amoret, Amoret coffee, capacitance, capacitive, Clausius Mossotti relation, coffee roasting, effective medium theory, green beans, moisture content, Notting Hill, random thoughts on the physics of coffee roasting, water measurement

Coffee review General Observations slow

2 years in

3D hot chocolate art on an iced chocolate, Mace, Mace KL, dogs in a chocolate — Happy birthday to me

Last weekend, Bean Thinking turned 2. So I’ve been looking back at the cafés I’ve visited over the past two years. Bean Thinking started as a way to slow down and to try to see things in a (slightly) different way, to really enjoy the coffee but also to take time to explore the stories, and the science, that can be found in different cafés. I’ve enjoyed the coffee in each café that I have visited but, as always happens, some stick in the memory a little more than others.

So I decided to pull together five cafés which, for me, had an interesting story to tell or prompted an unexpected chain of thoughts. I have sadly had to leave out some great cafés and some really fun stories (for me to think about at least). However, these five stood out. Each café introduced an unexpected bit of science to me, or had something about them that meant that slowing down and enjoying the coffee provided a really special moment. Consequently, each café features for slightly different reasons, and so rather than create a top 5 (which would be impossible anyway), I have listed them alphabetically. I hope you’ll excuse this trip down memory lane.

Amoret, Hammersmith

Kettle drum at Amoret — Coffee on a drum at Amoret

It is not every day that a well made V60 can transport you to another planet. Yet that is what happened for me at Amoret in Hammersmith. The cylindrical design of the table reminded me of a drum but the question is, why do drums make the sounds that they do? The answer to this question took me on a journey into sounds. Just how different would Bach’s famous fugue sound if played on Venus rather than Earth? And then a surreal moment as a Dutch TV station decided to take Bananarama to Venus courtesy of research conducted at Southampton University. This was all accompanied by great coffee in a very pleasant cafe, the review can be found here.

Coffee Affair, Queenstown Road,

Contemplating the floor at Coffee Affair

Where better to slow down and appreciate the moment than a place reminiscent of the geology of the South Downs that helped Charles Darwin to argue the case for his theory of evolution. Coffee Affair occupies the old ticket office at Queenstown Road station. The fixings and the floor of the café reveal evidence of the people who inhabited this space in times past. Watching the V60 being prepared, slowly, carefully, exactly, emphasises this sense of time. The result is great coffee in a place that almost forces you to step out of the speed of modern life and stop, put down the smart phone and take time to just notice. Coffee Affair was reviewed here.

Lumberjack, Camberwell,

Lumberjack coffee Camberwell — Exploring local connections at Lumberjack

There’s a strong emphasis on keeping it local at Lumberjack in Camberwell, as well as a preoccupation with all things wooden (this being an enterprise set up with London Reclaimed). So it was interesting to discover that there was a fairly local connection between Camberwell and the ultimate ‘local’ London tree, the London Plane. Not only that, but research that had been published a few weeks before I went to review Lumberjack had shown that, surprisingly, the wind speed needed to fell a tree was fairly constant at around 56 m/s, irrespective of the size or type of tree. This surprising finding was the cherry on the cake for this ultimate in local reviews (here).

Red Door, Greenwich,

vortices, turbulence, coffee cup physics, coffee cup science — Beautiful physics at Red Door

Just what would happen if you put a cup of coffee on a record player? A turntable in a corner at Red Door in Greenwich meant that not only did I start to think about this question, I decided to start some experiments to find out. The resulting physics was physically as well as scientifically beautiful. The experiments can be done by anybody with equipment that you can probably find at home (though I would recommend not using an actual turntable). It turned out to be an elegant experiment involving vortices, but as Helmholtz noticed, similar vortices form in organ pipes, the atmosphere and even in electromagnetism. Truly a beautiful piece of connected physics that I would have missed had I enjoyed my coffee ‘takeaway’. More here.

The Turkish Deli, Borough Market,

Turkish coffee — The universe in a cup of coffee at The Turkish Deli

“The universe is in a glass of wine” so said a Greek poet according to Richard Feynman, but at the Turkish Deli it is more obvious in a cup of coffee. When made properly, Turkish coffee requires at least four minutes of ‘settling time’ before it can be enjoyed. You could use this time to think about how the concentration of coffee particles changes as a function of the depth. Similar considerations led Jean Perrin to conduct experiments back in 1910 that he declared showed that “… it becomes very difficult to deny the objective reality of molecules” (which before that point had indeed been very much denied). Now that The Turkish Deli also roast and grind their own coffee on-site, there is even more reason to visit and ponder the connectedness of our coffee and our planet. The Turkish Deli was reviewed here.

With so many more cafés to explore, and things to discover, who knows what the next year or two will bring. And if you’ve got a recommendation or found a great café where you have stopped and noticed something intriguing, no matter how lateral, why not drop me an e-mail, I’d love to hear your experiences of slowing down and appreciating our coffees.

Coffee review General Observations Science history

Echoes of Bach at Amoret, Hammersmith

Post author By beanthinking
Post date March 9, 2016
No Comments on Echoes of Bach at Amoret, Hammersmith

Amoret coffee Hammersmith — Amoret, so new it still didn’t have its name on the outside.

Amoret is a new addition to the coffee scene over in Hammersmith. Just up the road from the Hammersmith & City line entrance of Hammersmith tube station, I nearly missed this cute cafe when I walked past as it had no name on its frontage, nor did it have the chalk board that is characteristic of many cafes. Fortunately however, I had the address and so double backed to find a great little cafe. It appears that that majority of Amoret’s business comes from take-away orders although there is a small seating area at the back (it is small, when we visited in February, there were two chairs and a couple of tables/stools). If you are fortunate enough though to be able to take a seat at the back of the cafe, I would thoroughly recommend doing so. Not only can you enjoy good coffee in a nice environment, the friendly people behind the bar were very happy to chat about their coffee and cafe. Moreover, there is plenty to notice from this observation post at the back of the cafe.

When we visited, the espresso based coffee was by Campbell and Syme, with V60s that featured different guest roasters (though it seems that other roasters also regularly feature for the espressos). I had a coffee from Panama, roasted by Union, which featured the word “caramel” in its tasting notes. I have simple tastes (‘caramel’ or ‘chocolate’ descriptions always go down well) but it was a great coffee. Complementary water was available at the counter with take-away cups (and water ‘glasses’ ) that were compostable and biodegradable*. As the very friendly staff brought my coffee to the table, I noticed that the ‘table’ that I had put my water on was in fact a metal drum that sounded ‘clang’ as the cup was put down. The sound of the drum immediately suggested that the drum was hollow. We all recognise the sound of a hollow drum, it is partly about the pitch of the sound, but partly about the echoes that we hear as the sound reverberates inside the metal.

Although it appears simple, the sound made by the drum is influenced by many aspects of the drum’s construction and surroundings. The stiffness of the metal and the atmospheric pressure affect the way that the drum’s surface vibrates, while the size of the drum and the speed of sound in air also affect the note, or pitch, that we hear. How is the sound of the drum affected by a change in its surroundings? For example, if the atmosphere in Amoret got much warmer, the speed of sound would increase, how would that affect the sound of the table-drum?

A few years ago, Professor Timothy Leighton was wondering how the properties of the atmosphere affected the sounds of musical instruments. Specifically, he wondered what instruments would sound like on other planets. Take Venus. Venus is a planet with a very dense, very hot atmosphere. The surface temperature on Venus is 457C (Earth’s average is approx 14C) while the atmospheric pressure is 90 Bar (Earth’s average: 1 Bar). As it gets hotter, the speed of sound increases and so, to a first approximation, the note made by the drum-table at Amoret will sound higher as the air gets warmer. However, the metal of the drum is also hotter on Venus (so less stiff) and the density and pressure of Venus’ atmosphere will act to further complicate things. So to start thinking about how things sound on Venus, we would be more sensible to think about a simpler instrument, such as an organ, which is only affected by the change of the speed of sound†. Take the famous case of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Played on Venus, the researchers found that, rather than be in D minor (293.66 Hz), it would have the pitch of F minor (at 349.23 Hz). You can hear Bach’s Toccata on Venus (Mars and Titan) here.

What about a human voice, how would a person sound on Venus (were they able to survive)? In humans, the pitch of the voice is determined by the rate of vibration of the vocal cords. So it is possible to construct a speech synthesiser to imitate human speech by modelling such a voice ‘box’. Erasmus Darwin, (grandfather to Charles) made such a device in around 1770 with wood, leather and silk‡. Darwin’s voice synthesiser could pronouce the sounds ‘p’, ‘m’, ‘b’ and ‘a’ and so ‘mama’, ‘papa’, ‘map’ and ‘pam’, which by some accounts was convincing enough to fool people into thinking there was a small child in the room. Why did people think that Erasmus’ ‘child’ was small? It turns out that just as with the drum, when we listen to people speak, we do not just register their pitch but also the echoes on their voice. Each time we make a sound, the sound travels from the vocal cords down to the lungs (where it gets reflected upwards) and up to the mouth (where it gets reflected downwards). We subconsciously listen for these echoes and, if they take a long time to appear, we deduce that the person is large (there is a greater distance between their voice box and their lungs). If the echo comes back quickly, clearly the distance between the voice box and the lungs is smaller and hence the person is smaller. Just like the drum at Amoret, the human voice is a bit more tricky to model on Venus than Erasmus Darwin’s device allowed for.

Leighton and co-author Andi Petulescu considered the question of the sound of the human voice on Venus in their 2009 paper. Firstly they said, the density of Venus’ atmosphere would make the vocal cords vibrate more slowly, so the person speaking would sound as if they had a deeper voice. But secondly, the high speed of sound on Venus would mean that those echoes that we listen for would come back very quickly, so we would perceive the speaker as being small. What does this sound like? A few years ago, a Dutch TV show set this very topic as a question for their annual quiz and answered it by one of the co-hosts singing Banarama’s “Venus” with, and without, the Venus voice changing software of Leighton. If you understand Dutch, the full clip is below. If you don’t understand Dutch but would just like to find out how you would sound on Venus while singing Banarama, forward to 7 minutes in for the version on Earth and 7m46 in for the Venus version.

It is not easy for us to travel to Venus to investigate whether Prof. Leighton was correct. It is possible for us to repeatedly visit Amoret to investigate how the coffee cups sound as they are put on the drum as the temperature changes around us. This seems a fantastic excuse to revisit to me.

Amoret is at 11 Beadon Road, W6 0EA

‡”Erasmus Darwin – A life of unequalled achievement” by Desmon King-Hele was published by Giles de la Mare Publishers (1999)

* It should be noted that ‘compostable’ plastic has a very specific definition that does not mean that it can necessarily be composted in the way that you or I would understand the term, as I described in more detail here. Nonetheless, it is definitely a significant improvement from conventional plastic and I would love to see more cafes follow suit with environmentally sound packaging.

† Of course this comes with a fair few caveats, not least the fact that the organ has to have flue pipes only. I would thoroughly recommend browsing Professor Timothy Leighton’s excellent webpage on this and other aspects of acoustics which you can find here.