WEBVTT - How Coffee Machines Work 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.520 Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from stuff 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:14.240 dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:18.400 Jonathan Strickling and I'm Lauren boggle Bom. She's back again. 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:23.760 Lauren has graciously agreed to join me on this episode 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:27.200 because we're talking about a subject that I think we could. 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:29.400 I think it's safe to say you and I are 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:35.560 passionate about the subject, extremely passionate, passionate on a daily basis, 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.360 perhaps dependent upon it. It would be a better way 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:42.360 of raising it. Yes, we're talking about coffee, coffee machines 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:46.760 and and that wonderful life blood that makes me not 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.920 murder everyone and sometimes makes you walk right through walls. 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:53.760 It definitely gets my stabbing levels down to an acceptable 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:57.560 level so that I don't go around stabbing people. Yeah. 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:00.000 We uh. This is something that a lot of listeners 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.360 have been requesting. They We received a couple of different 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:06.600 requests from listeners to cover coffee machines. So in order 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:08.440 to do that, I thought it'd be fun to first 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.840 talk about coffee itself, kind of the history of coffee 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:15.680 and where it comes from and how it's grown and 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:18.800 what it's like, and then we'll transition into the various 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:23.920 ways human beings have used coffee to make a beverage 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.800 that we all know and love. Most of us, I mean, well, 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.000 I mean those of us that aren't wrong. Right, maybe 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:36.040 you're a tea drinker. We don't pass judgment. I drink 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.479 tea as well. Yeah, both, yeah, in fact, sometimes mixed 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:42.640 because well it's not necessarily on purpose. I just I 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.560 have a problem alright. So anyway, where does coffee come from? Well, 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:50.560 coffee plants are very particular, right, they need specific types 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:54.360 of soil. They need a certain level of of of 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:57.240 richness to that soil, and needs be nice fertile ground, 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:01.000 and they need really mild temperatures. So they don't do 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.840 well in climates where you get a lot like there's 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:05.760 a big difference between the highest of the highs and 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:08.360 the lowest of the lows. So you're talking something in 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:12.760 the tropic kind of area. Yeah, the equatorial area, you know, 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.480 somewhere around the equator. That's where your weather does not 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.839 different change that dramatically from one part of the year 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.200 to the other part of the year. And there's actually 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.560 a band that you could look at with the the 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:28.520 very the the two the two borders would be the 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:32.040 tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, and we 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:36.400 refer to this band with a particular little nickname. As 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:40.520 far as coffee goes, the bean belt, bean belt, And 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.480 so that sounds like a fabulous fashion accessory. It does, 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.919 doesn't it. Yeah, I doubt I could rock the bean belt. 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:50.480 I just I'm not confident enough in my look. But 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:53.080 the only state in the United States that actually falls 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:55.880 in that range where you could grow coffee is Hawaii, 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:58.720 and the Big Island of Hawaii is a place where 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.799 coffee has grown. There are many plantations. They're the volcanic soil, 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.280 as it turns out, is great for growing coffee in general. 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:08.200 Higher altitudes are really excellent for ground coffee. And they 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:12.600 have a mountain or two on the Big Island. I've 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:16.280 visited the Big Island. I have actually visited coffee farms, 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:20.440 coffee plantations. I've never been to a coffee farm. It's 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:24.600 so awesome. Yeah, you get to actually see how the 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:29.080 plants are grown, how how people are harvest the coffee cherries. 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:31.240 The one the tour I went on, they let you 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:33.519 pick a coffee cherry and actually taste it, so you 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:35.800 could get to experience what it was like. Oh, which 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:39.120 is how you have a recommendation for maybe not eating 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.480 a whole lot of coffee cherries. Coffee cherries, by the way, 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:45.640 are how coffee grows, because it doesn't just grow in 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:49.040 a little pre roasted bean on a bush. That's ridiculous. 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:51.320 It's not a it's not in a pod. Now. It's 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.000 not like like beans like green beans. It's not like 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.000 that right right there. Their seeds really, and so they 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:00.680 grow in what's called coffee cherries or coffee berries sometimes, 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:03.040 which looks a little bit like a like a cherry 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.280 or a grape. Like it's sort of olive size. Yeah, 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.760 rub out that size, maybe a little for the smaller olives. 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.800 Not not like those ginormous olives. Olives you defy the 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.279 laws of man. Uh. These are these They do look 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:19.400 kind of like grapes, kind of like like like a grape, 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:22.520 and the cherry really got friendly and had little babies, 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:27.799 and the skin is kind of tough. But then once 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:31.440 you pierce the skin, it's all like juicy and birsty. 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.600 The skin is also very bitter, so I don't recommend 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:38.400 chewing on the skins so much. Um, And the fruit 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.599 is very sweet, it's very sticky, it's got a subtle 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:46.120 flavor to it. I think of it kind of like 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.200 rose water and watermelonw Yeah, I think I want to 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.360 eat that. Actually, that's got to be careful though, because 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:58.120 those coffee beans, the seeds are really super hard and 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:01.280 if you're just crunching, you could crack a tooth. Yeah, 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:04.760 well recommend I do know that in some places they 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:08.719 save they save the fruit once they've used the rest 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:10.919 of the of the bean for coffee purposes, dry it 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.599 out and use it for tea. Oh. Interesting, so you 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:17.599 can brew a tea using that. Now, once you strip 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.440 that fruit away, you still have some layers on top 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:24.679 of the bean itself, right, so skins kind of Yeah. 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.680 So you have to actually go through a process to 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:29.839 get to the point where you can get to the beans. 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:32.640 So you harvest the coffee easy pick. These cherries, those 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:35.159 are either dried in the sun over the course of 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.920 a week to tend a something like that, or they're 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:40.760 placed in a pulping machine to remove the fruit and 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.960 then uh, those beans are dried by the sun. Usually 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:46.839 you can do it in other ways, but the sun 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.400 is the sun is kind of right there. Yeah, the 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:51.400 ones I've seen they put them in like these big 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.960 uh sieves almost, and then they rake them occasionally to 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.880 make sure that they're all drying evenly. Yeah, sort of 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:00.960 like a like if you've ever been gold panning, sort 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:03.839 of like a very large gold panning thing, right, and hey, 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:08.320 this stuff it's it's like just as valuable as gold 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:12.160 in my eyes, so other black gold. Yeah, after you 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:14.159 dry it, that's when you can get those other elder 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.039 layers of the bean removed in a process that's called hulling, 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:20.600 as in removing the holes around the beans. They are 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:24.400 graded and sorted by size and density. And then the 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.359 this coffee, which is referred to as green coffee, the 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.840 beans have a kind of greenish tinged them, then is 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:35.239 shipped to roasters. So you often don't have a coffee 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.960 plantation and roaster on the same premises you would. You would. 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:42.120 Some of the coffee plantations sell their own coffee. But 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.320 it's a kind of interesting thing because they'll send the 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:47.520 green coffee off to roasters. Roasters will send the roasted 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:50.080 coffee back to the plantation and then the plantation can 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.440 sell it well. The roasting is a very specific process 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.880 in different people have very specific ideas about exactly how 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:59.720 much a coffee bean should be roasted and depending on 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.279 the type of coffee plant, and there are like six 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.920 thousand species within the coffee a genius, so you've got 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:08.239 a lot of options in there. Yeah, it's it gets 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.080 very particular. So how does how does the roasting process go? All? Right? 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:14.679 So you get like a a roaster that can rotate, 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:17.440 So it's got a tumbling kind of kind of like 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:20.320 a clothes dryer. It tumbles because you want all the 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.600 beans to uh, to roast evenly. You don't want to 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:26.360 end up with like a bottom layer that is roasted 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:28.760 to one degree and the stuff above it is to 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:30.960 a different one than you have. You don't have consistent 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.840 coffee right right. Yeah. My first thought that I was like, 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:36.080 it's like a rotisserie. And then I was like, but 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:38.160 that would be terrible for beans because you know, you 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.200 can't like spit them like you can't a chicken. And 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:41.960 then he said and then he said like a clothes dryer, 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:43.280 and then I just thought of like a clothes dryer 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.280 full of chickens, and then I was like, this is 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:47.720 a terrible I'm just oh, I just need to share 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:49.520 this with someone to get this idea out of my head. 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.480 It's like the ring sounds like a rejected Gary Larson 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.760 farside cartoon. Like, you know, this is too horrifying even 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:59.360 for me. Clothes dryer full of chickens. Well at any rate. 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:02.640 So the roosters, they are put to a temperature of 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:06.800 around five frees fahrenheit, which is about celsius to get 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.160 the beans to the right temperature, and once the beans 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:15.920 are hot enough, they undergo a process called pyrolysis. They 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:19.360 expand kind of like popcorn. They actually pop out and 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:22.360 get much larger than they normally are. And the longer 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:25.560 you roast the coffee bean, the more intense the flavors become. 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.080 The more intense the aroma becomes, those oils become really concentrated. 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.400 You do. However, if you're the longer you roast them, 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:34.800 you also lose more and more of the caffeine that's 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:40.200 inside them. So so darker beans are actually less caffeinated 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:44.280 by the lighter flavored greener beans. Yeah, so if you 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:48.640 have a light roast coffee, you typically have more caffeine 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:50.240 in it than a dark roast. Keep in mind that 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:53.520 it also depends upon the species of the coffee plant. Right, 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:57.160 Some have more caffeine than others, and depending upon the 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.920 process that they're using, sometimes coffee makers will actually add 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:07.360 caffeine back into the mix afterward, because you want to 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:10.640 make sure that you have that kick. But yeah, some 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:13.840 people prefer the the robust flavors of a dark coffee. 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:16.640 They do have stronger flavors. Some people prefer the lighter 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.480 flavors and the caffeine kick from the lighter coffee. Uh. 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:23.640 And in general, lighter coffees have more caffeine. And we've 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:26.840 been doing this for a while as a human beings 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:30.800 have been harvesting coffee for quite some times. Yes, not 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:37.040 just Jonathan and I. We've been spending literally hours harvesting 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:41.360 coffee today in preparation for this podcast. By harvesting coffee, 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:46.120 we mean breating articles and drinking it. Yeah. Legends placed 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:48.360 the discovery of coffee a couple of thousand years ago, 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:52.280 um supposedly when a goat hurd in what would become 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.240 Ethiopia noticed that his heard got real perky when they 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.280 ate the berries off of this one particular plant. The 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:04.440 goats seemed to dance, dancing, dancing the name of a 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.640 of a brand of coffee. Yeah, local, local, roaster and sellar. 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:12.040 You're in Atlanta, right, Actually, they're they're very local. They're 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.600 right there. They're a ten minute walk from our office. 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.600 Good good coffee if you ever get in to Atlanta. Like, um, 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:22.920 people have probably been eating coffee for a long time. 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.840 East African tribes eased to make uh, these balls of 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:30.120 like animal fat plus coffee berries. Um. So if you 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:31.880 thought that putting butter in your coffee was a whole 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:35.160 new fangled thing, then you're you're actually late to the game. 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.400 Historians think it was developed into a drink somewhere around 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.319 one thousand CE on the Arabian Peninsula, and it became 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:48.000 hugely popular with Muslim populations there. They do not consume alcohol, 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:50.440 so I assumed that this was a thing that they 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:53.679 were kind of like, yeah, drugs are good. Yeah, this 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.280 is an alcohol, and yet it gives us an interesting 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:01.640 energetic feeling. Um, and it's bread. As the religions spread 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:04.680 throughout the next few centuries. Legend also has it that 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.760 coffee growers were so protective of their crops that they 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:11.560 didn't allow plants or even fertile seeds to leave the 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:15.959 Arabian Peninsula for for hundreds of years until a man 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:18.440 smuggled some seeds out of Mecca by strapping them to 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:23.800 his chest. Um. Whether or not that is true, India 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:27.360 definitely had some coffee crops growing by about sixteen hundred, 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:32.000 and European travelers around that time started catching on to 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:34.760 this whole coffee thing. The Dutch were the first to 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.240 the first Europeans to start up a coffee estate that 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.840 was on Java, Java Island in sixteen sixteen, and we 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:45.560 think it arrived over in the America's possibly also through 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:50.400 smuggling around the seventeen twenties. Brazil and Columbia are now 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:54.880 the largest producers of coffee, followed up by Indonesia and Vietnam. 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:58.480 I remember hearing a story at one point about uh 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:03.000 that smuggling of coffee beans into the America's through uh 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:08.520 being hidden in flowers. Yeah, yeah, I heard that. Um 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:15.040 Uh Brazilian foreign dignitary uh talked real pretty too to 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:19.920 the wife of someone over in a coffee growing estates 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.760 and then managed to smuggle them back to back to 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:28.839 Brazil where it flourished. But so smuggling big in the 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:30.800 coffee world, as it turns out, like one of those 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:36.880 things where this belongs to the world for freedom, for freedom. 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:39.720 So let's talk about the history of the action of 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:42.560 the coffee machines, the various devices we have used to 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:45.800 make coffee. Some of these, you know, you might argue, uh, 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:50.439 take the term machine pretty liberally, but it is interesting 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:54.040 to note that even the most simplistic methods of making 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:59.920 coffee have a relation to the standard coffee drip machine 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:02.360 that a lot of people have in their homes. Oh yeah, yeah, 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:04.920 these first two are not electronic forms, but I would 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:09.040 remind you that even a lever is a machine, although 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.600 this first one I hesitate to call a machine. It's 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.640 really more like a device or a prop um. The 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:17.080 simplest way to make coffee or yeah, it's just by 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:21.719 pouring hot water over or through some grounds. Um, I'm 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.840 very fond of my drip cone personally. Uh. It's just 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.320 a cone shaped thing and you put a filter in 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:29.800 it to contain the grounds, and you place the whole 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:31.760 contraption on top of a coffee cup and then you 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.000 pour hot water through it until the cup is full 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:37.440 of coffee, and then yeah, everything is better in the universe. Um. 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.640 A little bit more complicated than that is what's known 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:43.840 in the US as a French press and more generally 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.720 around the world as a coffee press or coffee plunger 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:50.920 or cavitiery a pistone. And this is a very simple 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:56.720 manual machine, uh manpowered or woman powered, person powered really 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:00.880 um consisting of you know, cylindrical chamber and a fitted 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:04.520 filter that's attached to a rod. You steep the coffee 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:06.959 grounds in hot water in the chamber, and when it's 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:09.760 brew tre're liking, you just push the filter down into 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:13.959 the chamber that the water flows up through the filter 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.040 and it collects the grounds at the bottom of the chamber, 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.320 which let's see pour non chewy coffee off of the 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:23.960 top and you, uh, you gotta make that. You've gotta 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:28.520 make both the pressing uh very smooth and slow and 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:30.600 the pouring you need to make nice and smooth and 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:32.760 slow so that you make sure you're not stirring up 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.080 a lot of sediment. You can get sediment from French press. 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:38.760 Coffee definitely usually tends to end up in the cut 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.120 no matter what. The first time I ever used a 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.720 French press was at a restaurant in Las Vegas with 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:47.160 lots of people all around me, and I just felt 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:49.960 like I've got to do this right, or everyone will 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:54.080 judge me. And I know that what happens in Vegas 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:56.160 stays in Vegas, but I'm not even comfortable with that, 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:59.800 to tell you the truth I want to make. And yes, 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:04.240 you are just pushing the grounds further and further down 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:06.760 to the bottom while the water is allowed to go 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:09.440 through the filter or the brewed coffee. At that point, 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:11.960 it's night in water. It's brewed coffee is able to 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:13.640 pass through the filter so that you can pour it 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:15.840 into your cup. And a lot of people will like 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:18.880 this method because they think it brews a particularly smooth 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.960 cup of coffee. Yeah, and unlike unlike coffee that eases 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.840 paper filters and it's processing even like with my drip cone. Uh, 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:29.240 you're allowing all of the oils and the coffee to 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:31.360 make their way into your cup. Oil is kind of 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.120 where the flavor is residing. So if the paper is 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:36.120 absorbing some of the oil, you're losing a little bit 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:38.040 of something and getting a tiny little bit of paper 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:40.160 fiber in there. And and some people are just like, 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:45.400 that's just not acceptable, unacceptable, purest form of coffee oil 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:47.880 to go into my system as possible, I do, I 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:50.560 do prefer French press to all other forms of coffee 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:54.120 now might be a coffee snob. The idea of fixing 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:57.080 a screen like straight to a pot in order to 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:00.320 avoid getting grounds in your cup probably goes back a ways, 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.200 but the first patent on the on the actual plunger 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:07.040 device was granted in France in nineteen nine, hence the 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:10.520 term French press. Now, if we go back further to 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:13.560 the early eighteen hundreds, that's when we get the first 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:16.960 inventions of the percolators. Now, we may be familiar with 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:19.520 a percolator that if you've ever seen a coffee pot's 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.760 got a little like knob type protrusion on the very 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:24.880 top that's clear. Yeah, it looks sort of like a 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:27.320 sort of like do you remember the board game Sorry 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.480 from when you were a kid that papomatic bubble? Yeah? Yeah, 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:32.800 I always when I was a kid, I thought that 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:36.440 my grandmother's percolator coffee cup would probably had a popomatic bubble, 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:39.400 and she was like, don't touch that, it's hot. Yeah yeah, 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:41.880 And in fact it would be hot. And the reason 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:44.520 why it's clear is so that you can see when 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.840 the coffee has been has finished percolating, in case you 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.800 could not hear it finishing. So this is a really 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:52.920 simple machine as well. You've got a chamber at the 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:55.160 bottom of the pot. This is the one that's you know, 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:57.120 closest to the source of heat. This is where the 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:00.160 water goes and a tube leeds up from the us 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:03.320 chamber to the top of the pot. Uh. You put 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:05.520 the right amount of water in and coffee grounds go 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:07.879 into another chamber. That's it's at the very top of 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:12.680 the pot. So you've got a filter at the base 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:16.560 of the coffee grounds chamber. So here's the deal. You've 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:21.359 got the whole coffee pot on a heat source. The 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.600 heat source heats the water to boiling. That boiling water 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:28.640 starts to push water up the tube. It forces water 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:30.760 up that tube because there's nowhere else for it to go. 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:33.960 So the water goes up the tube where it bubbles 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:35.560 over the top. That's where you see on the top 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.600 of the percolator little water bubbling over. When it bubbles 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:40.760 over the top, it goes down into the coffee grounds 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:43.040 and so the coffee grounds and the water get having 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:46.320 a little party up there. It absorbs some of those 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:51.960 coffee oils. UH. The now coffee or very weakly brewed 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:54.880 coffee at this point starts to sit down, eventually going 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.719 down through the filter and back into the chamber below. 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:04.159 It continues this process as the cooler water is sinking 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:07.360 closer to the heat source, getting a heated up boiling 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:10.240 going up through that tube. The process continues in a 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:13.440 cycle until you're getting to a point where all the 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:17.200 water inside the percolator is near boiling temperature. Now you 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.640 don't want it to actually boil boil, because they say 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:24.480 that boiled coffee is spoiled coffee. It's not gonna taste good. 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:27.359 But you want, like like any other food, you can 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:29.600 totally burn coffee. Oh yeah, and you know it when 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:33.480 you've had it, you're just like a favor of failure. 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:35.240 It is it is, and it's you know, you're like, 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:38.280 I'm still gonna drink it, but I'm not happy. So 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:42.879 this this continues until that percolating sound stops. That's a 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.679 signal that the water has reached this temperature of near boiling, 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:48.840 and you remove it from the heat and then you're 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.160 able to remove the grounds and pour cups of coffee 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:55.359 and uh and a lot of people really still prefer 0:18:56.080 --> 0:19:00.000 percolator coffee, whether it's one some percolators have a heating element. 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.800 It actually in the coffee thing, so you just plug 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:04.920 it in that sort of like an electric kettle. Yeah. 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:07.320 And then others are meant to go directly onto a 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.120 heating element, whether it's an electric stove, gas stove, maybe 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.320 even a fire if you're a cowboy, because the cowboys 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:17.120 made coffee, or a camper yeah, or a camper um um. 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:23.399 So that again popular but very simple yeahs And but 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.639 actually well, I mean most most coffee makers are very simple. 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:29.480 I hadn't thought about it very much until we started 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:34.680 doing this research. The next one is a vacuum drip, yeah, 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:38.160 which looks like it's something super cool and hip story 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:41.560 and chemistry related. Oh yeah yeah. When the first time 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:45.360 that I saw one was in a relatively fancy restaurant 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:50.840 down in St. Petersburg, I believe, actually and Florida or Russia, Florida, 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.080 just just checking and and and it looks it looked 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:58.760 like this crazy like like fifties era space age kind 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:01.920 of thing, or possibly like something from like from like 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:06.399 Gaslight Sci Fi kind of which which is true because 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:08.680 that's about when it dates from it even it dates 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:12.200 before Gaslight Sci Fi because it comes from the eighteen thirties, 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:14.840 but it's one of those that we've seen a resurgence 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.240 in recently as people have gone on the quest for 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.160 the perfect cup of coffee. And this is another one 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:23.639 that is based on a very similar principle as to 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:27.200 the percolator UH in several ways. So if you looked 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:29.720 at one of these, they tend to look something like 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.679 kind of like an hour glass of shape. The bottom 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:36.399 chamber is one that holds the water. It's connected via 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.320 a tube that has a filter in it to an 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:43.680 upper chamber. The upper chamber is open to the atmosphere, 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:48.600 is not closed exactly, it's not it's not sealed like 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:51.680 an hour glasses. You put the coffee grounds in that. 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:54.000 Now the filter keeps the coffee grounds from going down 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:58.080 into the lower chamber UH. And you would then turn 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:01.200 on the heat allow the water in the bottom chamber 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:03.840 to start to boil. That would make water vapor, that 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:06.959 would force it creates an increase in water and air 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:09.840 pressure weather because the water vapor is taking up more 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:13.159 space than the water was. That's forcing water up that 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:16.359 tube through the filter to mingle with the coffee grounds. 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:20.880 With these vacuum drip sets, you are supposed to stir 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:23.879 the coffee grounds and water together a little bit so 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:26.960 that you get a good amount of coverage and you 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:30.800 get the coffee grounds sufficiently wet so that those oils 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:34.480 seep into the water. When it cools down, the water 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:37.800 vapor in the bottom chamber begins to condense. That creates 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.120 a vacuum which starts to pull the coffee back down 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:44.399 the tube through the filter, so you don't get any grounds, 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:48.240 and it fills up that lower chamber not with water 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:51.400 but now with brood coffee. So that's why it's called 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:53.760 a vacuum drip. It's because that water vapor wentz Can 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:57.680 condensing creates the vacuum pulling the coffee back down. It 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:01.680 looks like magic. It looks like fancy coffee science magic 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:04.359 while that's going on, and it definitely looks like you know, 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:07.480 you're like, I have had a mad scientist brew me 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:10.800 a cup of coffee, and uh, it's very pretty. Like 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:14.040 a lot of these are very very The design just 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:17.520 makes it look really appealing. There's a very strong aesthetic 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:21.400 appeal to these, certainly more than you know, an average 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:23.960 coffee maker, right. A lot of those coffee makers are 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:27.480