This post describes some available tools for measuring water properties relevant to coffee and presents ways and a web tool to hack aquarium kits for a better precision.
Category Archives: Tools
The Struggle for a Steady Kettle Flow
In this post I discuss recent developments in my efforts to stabilize my kettle flow rate.
The Hardness of Green Coffee
In this post, I show that surface hardness might vary more than mass density across different green coffees.
What is Astringency ?
In this post I describe what causes astringency, and talk about ideas how we could potentially measure it or remove it post brewing.
Measuring Coffee Concentration with a 0.01% Precision
In this post I present an updated methodology to measure TDS with a 0.01% precision using a refractometer.
A Tool and Videos for Crafting Custom Brew Water
In this post, I present a new tool to create custom brew water recipes, which can be built from any soft water rather than distilled water.
An App to Measure your Coffee Grind Size Distribution
[Edit April 20 2021: Chris Satterlee generously developed install packages for both OS X here and Windows here ! His full GitHub repo is here. I’m very thankful for this help (it’s not straightforward at all to do this).] [Edit April 25 2019: Please note this is not an iPhone or Android app, and IContinue reading “An App to Measure your Coffee Grind Size Distribution”
Measuring and Reporting Extraction Yield
Since I received the VST Coffee Lab III refractometer thanks to Vince Fedele’s generosity, I started logging the concentration (in % TDS) of every coffee I brew. This allows you to calculate the average extraction yield of your brew, which represents the fraction of your coffee beans by mass that was dissolved in your brewContinue reading “Measuring and Reporting Extraction Yield”
Statistics and Blind Tasting
A friend recently asked me a really interesting question about the statistical significance of blind tasting. He asked: “How many times should I successfully identify an intruder coffee by blind tasting among a set of three cups, in order for my experiment to be statistically significant ?“ As you might imagine, I really like thisContinue reading “Statistics and Blind Tasting”
Water for Coffee Extraction
[Edit August 23, 2019: Please have a look at this new blog post if you are interested to craft your own brew water recipes ! ] Introduction In my first post, I mentioned how the water you use to extract coffee has a significant impact on the taste profile of your cup, in a way that doesContinue reading “Water for Coffee Extraction”
Coffee ad Astra 