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Coffee connoisseurs have long believed that adding a little water to beans before grinding them makes a difference. A new study by researchers at the University of Oregon seems to confirm exactly why.
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- Title
- Study seems to confirm secret ingredient for better coffee
- Authors
- WRAL
- Published
- Dec 25 2023
- Word count
- 1124 words
TL;DR: Add some water to your coffee beans to prevent static discharge and clump forming, or something to that extent.
Relevant quote:
I strongly recommend you actually read the article if this interests you, I just posted this because I abhor titles like that (not hating on OP as the article has the same title)
Edit: Title has been declickbaited - thank you u/cfabbro!
I edited the topic title to be the article lede, since that makes it much more clear and removes the clickbait aspect.
As the article mentions, this has been known in the coffee community as the RDT aka ross droplet technique and has been employed for quite a while by enthusiasts. Static has been a long problem for grinding and some grinders , like the Turin DF83 v2 employ plasma to reduce static. Personally I find RDT via spritzing to be the best way to go and many, like myself, use a cocktail atomizer to apply a spray or two after dosing out 30 g of beans.
Former barista champion and well known coffee youtuber James Hoffman interviewed the author of this paper, Dr Chris Hendon, on his channel. You can find the discussion here which is extremely interesting. In addition, Chris Hendon basically the preeminent coffee scientist, starting the entire discussion about water chemistry and coffee brewing with this paper and his book Water for Coffee, a newer style of espresso known as turbo shots, and even the impact of freezing coffee on grind distribution. Basically, if want to read serious papers on coffee science, Chris Hendon is your guy. Super nice too as I once wrote him an email after Water for Coffee came out to get some clarification on some of the stuff he wrote.
I heartily recommend James Hoffman's YouTube channel. Even if you aren't into coffee so much, his channel is quite interesting. He also has a great dry sense of humor and fabulous hair, usually.
My introduction to him was the video in which he experiments with deep frying coffee beans. I think that's probably as good an intro as any because it represents his channel well: it's got a bit of the food science angle, a good dose of his dry sense of humor, and his exuberance for all things coffee really shines through.
I also recommend his semi-blind taste tests of American supermarket coffees and non-dairy creamers, but I'd hold off on those until you get a feel for his humor and attitudes. Otherwise you'll probably come away just thinking he's a snob, which he kind of is, but kind of isn't.
Edit: also, the Hames Joffman channel is a kick as well. It's all humorous re-edits of his videos, which somehow works really well with his style of presentation.
I was in to making my own water for a while... and if there's any Flavor Aid to drink, I was guzzling. I can't remember the recipe I was using, but the cups had a really nice mouth feel, almost like using a metal filter or a french press, but with a paper filter. 'Round' is how I'd describe it... like slightly above room temperature water.
I stopped doing it because its such a slippery slope for me.
That's a really classy atomizer.
I recently started spritzing my beans before grinding them, just to help keep the mess under control. Literally only a drop or two of water, and I mix it through the whole beans thoroughly before continuing. I'm leery of introducing too much moisture into both the grinder machinery and the dry canister I keep my ground coffee in for the week before brewing it.
As a mess reducer, it's an imperfect solution but it does help a little. I haven't noticed any change in the flavor of the coffee. Sounds like maybe I'd need to add a larger amount of water to have an effect there but for the reasons I mentioned I really don't want to try that.
It helps a lot in my experience! Couple drops of water saves me from wiping down the counter top
How fine are you grinding? I’m doing a very coarse french press grind; those little buggers have wings, I tell ya.
Ah, I'm doing medium coarseness for pourovers. That may be the difference
EDIT: im also hand grinding. maybe that produces less static?
I'm surprised how much traction this is getting - I've seen this article copy pasted in a lot of publications, including major ones like CNN. I guess with all the fairly heavy news this is a fluff piece to fill out the gaps.
The Hoffman video goes more into it. Basically, the paper showed that FOR ESPRESSO, a large amount of water spray on the beans before grinding increased extraction rates for given espresso settings. This is theorized to be because decreasing the static even more than the usual RDT (Ross Droplet Technique) causes a decrease in "superclumps".
Hoffman experimented and it seems to depend on the grinder - some grinders naturally just seem to generate less static electricity, and don't benefit, while others do see a noticeable increase in extraction.
The espresso part is important - there's no way you'd see this matter in immersion brewing like an aeropress or french press, and it's very unlikely to make a difference with pour overs. It's really about how finicky and precise espresso can be as a brewing method.
to be fair though, reduced static is still likely to be beneficial for you in terms of cleanup regardless of your brewing technique -- my understanding is that this was the main reason for the RDT's proliferation in the first place. Coffee grinders that generate a lot of static make much more of a mess in my experience.
Sure, but RDT alone also doesn't have the effect noted in the title. You need considerably more water on the beans than normal RDT to see the increase in extraction for espresso per the paper.