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Please. Per capita energy usage of western countries is way higher than either India or china
I used sound waves to make espresso
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Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#72My dad was stationed on a submarine in the navy and he and a few others used to dump their laundry in the ultra-sonic cleaner normally used to clean engine parts. Said it did a great job....
Maybe there can be an ultra-sonic laundry machine
Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be a learning experience to find the right settings. 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.
I often produce espresso that is bitter and sour. 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...
What you’ve hit is uneven extraction. Parts of the puck were over extracted and other parts under extracted.
Usually the cause is channeling, where some pathways in the coffee puck are easier for water to get through, so they get eroded first which leads to even more water going through these channels. Coffee around these channels then gets over extracted (bitter).
Conversely, much less water is reaching the other parts of the puck, leading to those parts getting under extracted (sour)
Better puck prep helps. Using a WDT tool (some acupuncture needles on a cork would do) or a blind shaker to break up the clumps leads to good results. Making sure the surface of the puck is level after tamping is a big one as well.
What also helps is going coarser in the grind. The coarser the grind, the less puck prep matters and the less channeling occurs. Warning, you’ll no longer be getting the thick crema you may associate with espresso, or the instagram worthy beautiful rat tail extractions. But the coffee produced from coarse grind espresso is IMO much better.
I was taught a lot of this by Lance Hedrick and I applied these learnings to achieve mostly consistent fruity and sweet espresso on most mornings.
Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#74I don't know anyone who buys ready-to-drink coffee all that often. It's more of an impulse or convenience buy. Cutting costs does make sense for this type of product, but is it enough to keep up with declining demand?
There's probably 10 types of ready to drink coffee at Costco. Someone is drinking them, in bulk. Including my wife and daughter (different people)
Not sure the parenthesis was required but I laughed.
Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#75I see the value for American-style "espresso-flavored" drinks, or similar bottled/packaged products. But, yuck, who on earth wants to drink actual espresso at room temperature?
Fine for iced drinks or Americanos. Even drinks with hot milk might be ok. I guess it's not so great at a neat shit of espresso.
s/shit/shot/g
Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#76An espresso machine is essentially a 1-2kW electric boiler, a compressor pump, some valves/actuators, and some PIDs, right?
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.
Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be a learning experience to find the right settings. 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.
I often produce espresso that is bitter and sour. 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...
If your espresso is bitter and sour, you're getting uneven extraction. One reason for this includes channeling: water encountering a tightly-packed puck and boring a hole through it or even lifting the puck so that water flows around it. Channeling over-extracts the areas of the puck that experience a high flow rate and under-extracts the areas that experience low flow.
Channeling is usually caused by too fine of a grind. If your machine (I'm assuming it's a pump machine) is pegging the pressure gauge at max (and dumping excess pressure internally) and your coffee tastes unevenly extracted, you may want to try grinding coarser. Not only will this reduce channeling, it'll result in less fines in the cup, also reducing bitterness.
The best thing I ever did for my espresso was to give up on the rigid rules I was first taught as a beginner. I don't time my shots, I don't use fixed brew ratios, I do everything by feel (watching the pressure build and the coffee flow) and taste. I do use a scale (for weighing beans per dose and weighing shots for repeatability). I dial in by adjusting the coffee output rather than fiddling with the grind. I only set the grind once to get a reasonable pressure (6-9 bars, no maxing out or dropping off), then fine-tune the gram output.
The biggest insight I gained from this freestyle approach is that the standard 2:1 ratio is altogether wrong for most of the light-roasted coffees you get from specialty coffee roasters. They simply will not extract properly with that small amount of water. Grinding coarser and pulling a longer shot (sometimes called a "turbo shot") gives you a much better result.
Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#78As I glance at my (checks notes) $200 power bill in San Diego apartment used entirely to run 3 ceiling fans and a box fan, I’m getting curious about all the ways power consumption can be reduced. No AC, LED lights, all gas appliances. 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.
Were you running all those fans on high 24/7? Three 150W ceiling fans and a 50W box fan?
$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?
Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#79My dad was stationed on a submarine in the navy and he and a few others used to dump their laundry in the ultra-sonic cleaner normally used to clean engine parts. Said it did a great job....
Maybe there can be an ultra-sonic laundry machine
I guess a nuclear submarine doesn’t have the same power bill sensitivity as common household. ;)
Re: I used sound waves to make espresso
#80An espresso machine is essentially a 1-2kW electric boiler, a compressor pump, some valves/actuators, and some PIDs, right? 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 roof…
You’re missing the real cash cow here: industrial scale production.