RDT vs The AutoComb
Unless you’ve been making your coffee from under a rock lately, you probably heard that scientists recently caught up with something home baristas have known for nearly two decades: that spraying your coffee with water just before grinding can reduce the amount of static created while grinding. Less static means less chaff stuck to every […]
Shaken or Stirred
Take Control of Your Density We can’t be sure yet why shaking is so effective, but one intriguing theory, suggested by coffee researcher and roaster Dr Mark Al-Shemmeri, is that shaking has similar effects to a process called ‘densification’. Densification, also called ‘normalisation’, is a process in pre-ground coffee manufacturing, where ground coffee is passed […]
Shake it Real Good
Last month, we wrote about why you might want to shake your grounds before making espresso. Lance Hedrick’s testing showed that shaking was somehow dramatically increasing extraction in his espressos, while simultaneously decreasing shot time. We explored a few possible reasons why this might be, from elimination of static to the mysterious process known as […]