The cost of raw arabica beans, the core component of most coffee, has spiked in recent years due to four consecutive seasons of adverse weather. Climate change has added further strain, threatening the delicate temperature balance required by the Coffea arabica plant. This growing pressure has inspired physicists at the University of Pennsylvania to ask: Can we make great coffee with fewer beans?
The cost of raw arabica beans, the core component of most coffee, has spiked in recent years due to four consecutive seasons of adverse weather. Climate change has added further strain, threatening the delicate temperature balance required by the Coffea arabica plant. This growing pressure has inspired physicists at the University of Pennsylvania to ask: Can we make great coffee with fewer beans?
«There’s a lot of research on fluid mechanics, and there’s a lot of research on particles separately», says Arnold Mathijssen, assistant professor in the School of Arts & Sciences. «Maybe this is one of the first studies where we start bringing these things together.»
Their findings, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, provide a scientific approach to improving extraction efficiency so fewer coffee grounds can go further without diminishing overall quality.
«We tried finding ways where we could use less [or] as little coffee as possible and just take advantage of the fluid dynamics of the pour from a gooseneck kettle to increase the extraction that you get from the coffee grounds—while using fewer grounds», says co-author Ernest Park, a graduate researcher in the Mathijssen Lab.
