4 ms·
So, I am curious -- A while ago I experimented with making a better instant coffee. I came up with a few different solutions. I'm curious as to whether you've l
by sargun 10y ago
So, I am curious -- A while ago I experimented with making a better instant coffee. I came up with a few different solutions. I'm curious as to whether you've looked into them:
1) Pouring a ristretto into liquid nitrogen. At reconstitution time, put into boiling water and stir. Issue: Cold coffee, potential colloid separation -- solutions might include some kind of stabilizer
2) Taking a ristretto and removing water content to concentrate it, and then pull a vacuum on it and package it. Said package can then be opened and dissolved in boiling water. Issue: Complexity. Removing the water can be complicated, pulling a vacuum on it, and then heating it while at vacuum is hard.
3) Coffee puck: Take traditional coffee, and put it into a permeable membrane that when exposed to water above a certain temperature is permeable. When that temperature drops, it stops being permeable. Problem: Said polymers were hard to find.
- freese 10y ago1) You need to keep it frozen, right? That makes it a lot more complicated + probably issues with the colloids (we experienced that at one point) 2) The bigger challenge is actually brewing large amount of ristrettos/espressos, not necessarily concentrating it. 3) just sounds way too complicated to me to rival/equal soluble coffee Edit: haven't really looked into any of these as a feasible option for us.
- sargun 10y agoThis might be a trade secret, but how are you keeping the colloid solution coherent? I'm kinda surprised you say that brewing the ristrettos are the hard parts. I know that centrifugal brewing is all the rage these days (as siphon, pour-over, and espresso were before), but it seems like automating espresso is a solved problem. Are there no industrial-scale burr grinders? I think the biggest problem would be tamping and getting that to be consistent. Is there anyone who needs industrial scale espresso?
- zloof 10y agoThe part re: colloids is a trade secret at this point, but definitely a real challenge. As far as we could find, there is no common solution for industrial scale espresso. If someone has one, please post it here. This was a personal obsession of mine last spring - "How does this not exist?!?" Kalle is the coffee expert, but as the 'non-coffee guy', I have no idea why this wouldn't exist - I would have thought someone out there would need it?
- bowmessage 10y agoindustrial scale espresso: what about those automatic espresso machines you can sometimes find in office buildings? they pull single, double, or triple espresso shots from a touch screen interface. Can do lattes etc. too, but assuming you wouldn't need that part.
- sargun 10y agoThey're called super automatics. Generally, they're really expensive, and they make coffee very slowly (.5ml/second if you're lucky). They also tend to be built by companies who don't readily provide documentation on how to fix / modify them.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]