However, I'm going through the research paper, and am a bit skeptical of the energy savings angle, especially considering the many variables with espresso machine in terms of how they heat and brew (single vs dual boilers, heat exchangers vs dippers, spring lever machines vs pump driven). I'm weary of how they are doing a baseline comparison here, especially because the paper states that the comparison was done between a modified Ascaso machine (with the ultrasound gizmo) vs an entirely different machine (Sanremo Cube); and also that they swapped the Ascaso machine's original brew pump and put in a seemingly expensive, but more efficient "positive displacement magnetic gear pump". They still use the pump to drive about 11 bar of pressure during brewing with it run on some sort of interval schedule throughout the 3 minute cycle. They did factor out the initial heat up times which I guess makes sense.
However, another thing (on top of the obvious "room temperature espresso" problem) is that you'd still need steam / heat to produce milk based drinks (relevant for both home and especially cafes). Depending on the machine (including the Sanremo Cube they tested with) some of the "idle energy" usage is to support on demand steam generation. This doesn't seem to have been factored into their energy model which is pretty sketchy.
For industrial processes it probably doesn't matter - look at how nescafe is manufactured.
Was talking with a roaster who was providing espresso to a distillery recently. The distiller had tried a range of other products but only espresso shots were giving the flavour they were chasing. Needless to say, it ended up being a pretty limited run because the guys grew tired of pulling litres of shots for a batch!
If you don't need to heat the water before cooling it down it would be an enegy savings.
I am going to switch over to a bunch of DC tower fans which claim to cut energy usage substantially. I wish more appliances would just switch to DC motors.
California energy prices are among the highest anywhere, so anything you can do to cut usage will have a bigger payoff there, and justify some investment to achieve it.
$200 / $0.50 = 400kWh / 720 hours = 556 watts of load on average, which is more power than I use to run a 1-ton AC unit on auto.
BLDC motors are fairly common these days in HVAC equipment, speed control is much easier and they’re more efficient.
> I am going to switch over to a bunch of DC tower fans which claim to cut energy usage substantially.
I’m guessing they’re made by Vornado?
If you turn off all of your AC consuming devices is your meter still registering usage?
For domestic use, in the home of somebody whose coffee snobbery is dialled to 11, I need far more information.
What beans were they using, freshness, etc? (Edit: Campos coffee… not on my shopping list that’s for sure…)
How did they control for extraction method differences to maximise output quality for all brew methods? (Edit: TDS and EY)
Were the “regular” coffee drinkers regular consumers of espresso?
Most importantly, how long until Hoffman does a deep dive and much will it cost so I can allocate budget for yet another coffee making device?
I’m from Melbourne, have a Brewtus IV + Mazza Mini, probably have a low user ID on coffeesnobs, hung out every day our Prouds and Patricia’s, and can tell from first sip if the beans are South American, African, or from Sumatra, so you can probably tell I’m anal about my coffee… and all I can say is don’t knock Campos (especially their King Street).
I felt a great disturbance in Italy, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Espresso does not have milk.
Macchiato, is an espresso based drink with milk.
Edit: it's bad form to change your message after-the-fact to remove the thing that was quoted.
You're using the term in an unnecessarily specific way.
For those sensitive souls I'd think they'd be more worried about "Expresso","Frappacino", "Puppacino", Starbucks, and 20oz "venti" lattes.
When the choice is between the smell of unwashed and sweaty sailors with dirty clothes, or smoke, ashes, fag-ends and tobacco, then surely the latter beats the former.
The biggest downside: rinsing. You have to do it manually. And no, just refreshing the water and letting the ultrasonic emitter run will do nothing. And doing it manually takes a surprising amount of time.
But, yuck, who on earth wants to drink actual espresso at room temperature?
"You got your cold brew, your Japanese iced coffee, your iced americano. Then there's your mazagran, that's coffee with lemon juice, real refreshing. Your espresso tonic. Your iced latte, iced cappuccino, iced macchiato. You got your iced mocha, your frappuccino, your Greek frappé. Vietnamese iced coffee with the condensed milk dripping down real slow. Affogato, that's espresso poured right over ice cream. That's... that's about it."
Instead of heating water to extract coffee and then latter cooling it to freeze dry and make instant coffee you keep the whole process at low temperatures, saving lots of power.
I think almost everything tastes better at room-ish temperature.
(Some things need to be colder or hotter to keep their texture, but I can't think of anything that _tastes_ better outside of the 16~25°C range)
But the framing of the article around espresso specifically is somewhat bizarre. Most people want their shot of espresso to be piping hot, not room temperature. And most iced coffee is very intentionally not made with espresso (although you certainly can use it if you want).
The text of the article seems to suggest that this is more intended for "making ready-to-drink coffee products at industrial scale". But then that is not single-serve espresso shots that the article shows in several images.
So is this about room-temperature espresso shots (not what most people want) or about industrial-scale concentrated coffee? And if it's the latter, what would those machines look like? It's one thing to use ultrasound at a small scale; but what about in gigantic basins? Does that work, or are there challenges? Is this tech that scales?
Think an iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts or McDonald's or whatever instead.
Really? How is it made?
If you go to any random cafe and asked for an iced coffee, that's what they're going to give you.
If you want something else, you have to ask specifically for cold brew, or a specialty drink like an iced latte or something.
In all seriousness, people tend to have a routine around coffee, but I think the Aeropress showed that people will change if the result is meaningfully better.
Coffee usually goes in two directions. Under-extracted (sour) or over-extracted (bitter). Things that will affect the extraction are temperature (hotter usually means more extraction), time (longer = more), grind size (more surface area in smaller grinds = more), pressure (higher = more) etc. Roast levels also matter.
The best coffee that I've drank for the past five years have all been pour overs (my favorite was at a place called The Library in Toronto). I sometimes wonder if all the time, effort, and money I've dumped into espresso has been a huge mistake and maybe I should just buy a pour over setup...
Even if it draws 1.5kW constant for 24h/day that’s only 36kWh. That’s about ~$5 to ~$15 of electricity, depending on how mismanaged your utility is.
It costs less than an hour of labor to power an espresso machine for an entire day, the energy cost to pull a shot is negligible, pennies. The rooftop unit cooling and heating the coffee shop probably uses 2-3x more energy.
When I have a guest that wants a hot coffee, I just pour the shot into a mug and top it up with hot water to their taste, which works great.
What this isn't is anything new. That doesn't make it bad, but it's not novel.
https://www.engadget.com/osma-pro-cold-brew-coffee-machine-r...
Sadly, the company that made it flew a bit too close to the sun. I'd be genuinely sad if mine broke.
Cutting costs does make sense for this type of product, but is it enough to keep up with declining demand?
In any case, I think there are frauds in all ranks of universities. I've seen people in CMU steal someone else's research idea or even a whole paper and the university doesn't punish the professors who did this. It's the PhD students whose work and life gets destroyed by such things.
Extract with sound waves is an interesting idea, but dont romanticize demand that doesnt exist, it wrecks credibility, literally in the first sentence of the article
“Saving up to 75% of energy by not heating the water is a minor benefit for home users or small coffee shops. But for companies making ready-to-drink coffee products at industrial scale…”
The instant and dried coffee market is $35B-$50B. Cold Brew another $3B-$4B.
For home use I'm much more interested in being able to add it to cold drinks and desserts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlQT4ptwLKs
I was inspired by the above video and have been playing around with ultrasonically aged drinks for quite some time now. It's quite fun. Still haven't brought myself to try ultrasonically aged milk yet though.
I get the sense that these people think calling something espresso is a mark of quality, but it's just a brewing method like any other...
- The taste is apparently the same "There were no significant differences in aroma, flavour, bitterness or overall liking."
- That ultrasonic horn looks a lot smaller than both a modern espresso machine or a hand-cranked model like a Flair/Rok.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135041772...
AI generated/hallucinated article? Or no one, author or editor, read it before publishing?
I like my coffee heavy metal.
