3 ms·

This is super interesting! I had always assumed coffee was made via liophilization at scale, any insight on why it's not? On the subject of extraction, how ar

by yomly 10y ago

This is super interesting! I had always assumed coffee was made via liophilization at scale, any insight on why it's not? On the subject of extraction, how are you measuring yield? What are the main differences in the 40% coffee yield you're leaving on the table?

freese 10y ago
In normal conditions you can only extract up to ≈30% of the coffee beans mass, ie. no matter how fine you grind and long you brew you'll only get 30%. The rest are insoluble solids: cellulose so basically wood. When the big boys brew the coffee in really high temp and pressure (165-190C, 15 bars) the structure of the bean changes and previously insoluble parts of the hemicellulose become soluble. This means you get a higher yield but what you get are nasty, woody, heavy bitter compounds. Here's a diagram explaining more: https://goo.gl/dJTsxM https://goo.gl/dJTsxM
- yomly 10y ago
  Ah ok, with you now! Are you guys mainly a hardware company then? Anything cool going on software-wise for you guys?
  - freese 10y ago
    Yeah, mainly hardware now. We just hired our first dev (and are still looking for a VP Eng!) and have some software stuff coming up. First we're working on making the ordering process better and building tools for our subscribers. Here's the job posting in case you're interested: https://jobs.lever.co/suddencoffee https://jobs.lever.co/suddencoffee
    - yomly 10y ago
      Ok cool, thanks for sharing! A big part of artisanal coffee is that it uses high quality water (usually magnesium enriched after filtering via reverse osmosis iirc) - is there anything you can do to control for this / shitty water at the customer side? If you're brewing with Mg-water then, most of it will be left behind when freeze drying, of course, but water used to rehydrate the coffee will be a big one...

3 ms·

This is super interesting! I had always assumed coffee was made via liophilization at scale, any insight on why it's not? On the subject of extraction, how ar

by yomly 10y ago

freese 10y ago
In normal conditions you can only extract up to ≈30% of the coffee beans mass, ie. no matter how fine you grind and long you brew you'll only get 30%. The rest are insoluble solids: cellulose so basically wood. When the big boys brew the coffee in really high temp and pressure (165-190C, 15 bars) the structure of the bean changes and previously insoluble parts of the hemicellulose become soluble. This means you get a higher yield but what you get are nasty, woody, heavy bitter compounds. Here's a diagram explaining more: https://goo.gl/dJTsxM https://goo.gl/dJTsxM
- yomly 10y ago
  Ah ok, with you now! Are you guys mainly a hardware company then? Anything cool going on software-wise for you guys?
  - freese 10y ago
    Yeah, mainly hardware now. We just hired our first dev (and are still looking for a VP Eng!) and have some software stuff coming up. First we're working on making the ordering process better and building tools for our subscribers. Here's the job posting in case you're interested: https://jobs.lever.co/suddencoffee https://jobs.lever.co/suddencoffee
    - yomly 10y ago
      Ok cool, thanks for sharing! A big part of artisanal coffee is that it uses high quality water (usually magnesium enriched after filtering via reverse osmosis iirc) - is there anything you can do to control for this / shitty water at the customer side? If you're brewing with Mg-water then, most of it will be left behind when freeze drying, of course, but water used to rehydrate the coffee will be a big one...