Do your coffee grinds ever fly into the air or stick to your grinder?
A peer-reviewedstudypublished in the journal Matter confirms a little-known barista trick to reduce the spray of coffee dust.
The solution is simple.
Christopher Hendon at his coffee lab in Oregon.Photo: University of Oregon
The trick reduces the mess of any coffee grinder and improves the taste and strength of your espresso.
Just a little water makes the mess go away.
Aesthetically, it looks like its gone, senior author and materials chemist Christopher Hendon told Gizmodo.
Photo: University of Oregon
His lab caught the attention of a volcanologist at nearby Portland State University.
Joshua Mendez Harper was looking to apply his knowledge of volcanic static electricity to more fields of study.
(ItalysMount Etna produced some spectacular volcanic lightningduring an eruption last year.)
Inside a coffee grinder, beans rub together similarly, creating static electricity.
It makes a mess, flinging coffee particles all around your kitchen.
A lot of them get stuck in the grinder, damaging it over time.
The static also causes clumping, creating snowballs of ground coffee that can ruin your espresso.
So this interdisciplinary team decided to change that.
Their experiments design was simple.
That cup measures the voltage of the beans.
Beans with reduced static electricity translated into less mess and stronger espresso.
The study found that coffee with a higher moisture content will also perform better when ground into espresso.
Light roast coffee has a higher moisture content than dark roast because it hasnt been cooked for as long.
This means dark roasted coffees are prone to becoming clumpy.
However, a spritz of water will ensure any roast grinds well.
The study offers a cheap solution to improve the coffee-making experience of home brewers.
Mendez is using his volcanic lightning expertise to assistNASAs Dragonfly missionto Saturns moon Titan in 2028.
The same clumping we see in coffee and volcanoes could be happening on the surface of Titan as well.
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