A group of mathematicians and physicists have got together to carry out imperative research on how to make the perfect espresso ” showing up the Americans is just a side benefit.
We’re only joshing. We love our American cousins, even if they can’t spell properly or figure out what the hell pigs in blankets are. But the advice given out by the US’ National Coffee Association has proven to inaccurate, according to these Portsmouth academics.
According to the NCA, to make an espresso, coffee beans should be finely ground – we’re talking table salt levels here. But mathematician Dr Jamie Foster says otherwise.
“The… common wisdom in coffee-making is that if you want to make your coffee strong, what you should do is grind the beans finely. You can afford to grind your coffee slightly more coarsely than you might expect, use fewer beans, and therefore make a saving.”
The saving is a welcome by-product of the research that drills down to how well water passes through coffee granules. Fine, tightly-packed granules give water a harder time, so fewer beans ground a bit more coarsely will fix that.
In the taste test from the BBC’s video, it seems that customers preferred the coarser ground espresso, saying that the weaker-tasting of the two was the cup that had been made with the finely ground beans. So save money and your taste-buds by not grinding so hard on those beans. [BBC News]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.