For almost five years we've talked about coffee as an artisanal endeavor, much like other culinary arts.
But behind the curtain of great coffee shops, there are instruments. Charts and graphs. Time, temperature and extraction readings correlating to taste. Procedures and devices more at home in a laboratory than behind a coffee counter. The Other Black Stuff talks about the current state of measurement devices in an excellent post from this past weekend.
This testing is necessary for us to continue to brew the best coffee we're capable of brewing.
Admittedly, we haven't done as much testing as we think we should, nor have we taught everyone how to do their own analysis (although we do teach why). We aim to meet Golden Cup standards for our airpot brews (although we've never submitted ours for the "award"). We have a TDS meter. To date nobody's used it but Rich. The past couple of years we've been overrelying on what others have been doing regarding extraction instead of doing our own bench work. We're hoping for an Extract Mojo for Christmas (actually Rich is hoping he can convince his other employer to buy one that he can borrow...)
That changed with the Abid brewer. We're on our own with the equations we've come up with (although our brew methodology is close to others we've seen published). The results have been very encouraging with most customers who've tried an Abid brew switching to Abids for future cups because the coffee tastes better than from an airpot. Some customers have even told us their cups were as good or better than the same coffee brewed on more expensive equipment. That doesn't happen without testing on our end.
So kids, the moral here is that even if you think you're never going to use algebra or calculus in your career, study it anyway, because you might need it for that part time job you're taking while you're in college ;-)
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