James Hoffmann Answers Coffee Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

I'm James Hoffman an author and coffee expert and I'm here to answer your questions from Twitter this is coffee support [Music] first up black horse cough asks caffeine myths dark versus light does the type of roast affect how much caffeine is in coffee this is a really good question let me get some dark and light roasts for you now a lot of interesting stuff happens in The Roasting process with a lighter roasted coffee technically speaking more of the caffeine that was in the raw coffee is still in the coffee to get a darker roast the coffee spends more time in the roasting drum and it gets up to the kind of temperatures where caffeine sublimates it goes from a solid to a gas which is kind of interesting but this is the important thing this coffee is denser and if I took 10 grams of this coffee in 10 grams of this coffee there'd be more beans to make up the 10 grams if I was using the darker roast so while I might be less caffeine per Bean I'd be using more beans and so ultimately the amount of caffeine will vary a lot more by the type of coffee being roasted whether it's Arabica or a buster whether it's high grown or low grown the roast itself is not something you really need to worry about Robin Jerry Lee asks is there any good instant coffee there is there is good instant coffee now for a long time there was not instant coffee the point of instant coffee was cheap cheap coffee and that applied to the raw coffee going into it these days there are good specialty coffee is being turned into instant coffees but really the difference is down to the raw materials by putting good raw coffee well roasted into the whole process you get a surprisingly good result out Allison D rush asks how do coffee beans grow decaffeinated good question coffee does not grow decaffeinated coffee trees actually produce caffeine as a form of insect repellent the higher you grow coffee the less caffeine it needs to produce because the less insects there are now when we decaffeinate coffee there's actually a process that's done after harvest but before the coffee is roasted and there's a bunch of different ways to decaffeinate coffee some of which have very nice sounding names like Swiss water process others have terrifying names like ethyl acetate But ultimately all decaf processes are very safe and generally have to remove 99.5 of the caffeine from coffee to be certified as decaf however they are now starting to experiment with new varieties of coffee that are naturally very low in caffeine so keep an eye out for those those don't need decaffeination and they'll have way way lower levels of caffeine than normal coffee let's see what's next the pour over blog asks what to the ideal temperature for coffee that's a good question it has a bunch of different answers because I don't know what point you're talking if you're talking about brewing coffee then generally speaking close to Boiling Point is the right temperature for water for brewing coffee if you're talking about drinking coffee that's a very different answer now the interesting thing is very hot coffee doesn't taste as good as coffee getting closer to kind of body temperature when coffee goes from hot to kind of enjoyably warm it starts to taste much much much much better and so letting your coffee cool down a little bit before you drink it gives you a more complex more interesting experience ultimately because you as a human you're just not very good at tasting stuff that's a long way away from body temperature jnk vmk asks does anyone know how to make espresso without machine LMAO okay I have to do it I have to just cover this quickly the drink is technically espresso not espresso a large fraction of the internet will get very angry with you for using the wrong one I'm not one of those and actually in France it is the correct term it is espresso in France anyway espresso is interesting you can't really make it without a machine because of what defines it as espresso now espresso machines are really expensive because they do a bunch of stuff in terms of temperature and pressure and all that kind of stuff but if you just wanted to make really good but really really strong coffee there are a couple of bits of coffee kit though that can make really delicious strong coffee let me show you what I mean I love both of these and they're very different but they can both make really strong coffee this is an Aeropress it's super cheap indestructible 20 25 worth having a grade to travel with and this is the time ordered Classic this is a mocha pot or a stovetop Brewer both of these can make really strong coffee and buy a sort of strong coffee I'd be anything from almost espresso strength of like one part coffee to three parts water up to a kind of traditional mocha pop Brew of one part coffee to 10 parts water or if you have a way to foam milk at home you can make a delicious kind of homemade cappuccino and Kaya next door asks what about coffee makes me have to dookie like I don't understand that part it is weird it's kind of weird that when you drink coffee that can happen really quickly like like really quickly there's no way that it will worked its way through your digestive tract all the way down and then made the magic happen so science doesn't truly understand what's going on the sort of main theory is that it actually triggers a hormone response so when you drink coffee your body releases a hormone and that's what triggers the need to run to the bathroom with great speed at sleepy Lyra asks why do people put milk and sugar in their tea and coffee especially sugar like calm down and learn to love the bitter and not alter and change what the drink is supposed to be it's a good point there's a lot of reasons to put milk in coffee and mostly they are the coffee tastes bad now milk is going to add a little bit of sweetness to that drink that's definitely going to help but milk does another very cool thing it acts as a bitter blocker so when you've got harsh bitter coffee sugar doesn't actually decrease bitterness you can add a little bit of salt and actually if your coffee is really bitter a tiny pinch of salt is a wonderful thing but milk comes in and actually masks some of the bitterness and that's partly the sort of proteins of the milk and also the fat in the milk too which will give it a kind of nicer texture and mouth feel as for tea yeah I don't know I don't I don't really get milk and sugar and tea either so I'm with you at impact pod asks the Timeless question what's the difference between hashtag cold brew and hashtag iced coffee this is a big one and and this is where people really divide into camps especially on the internet so cold brew is cold coffee made with cold or room temperature water that means you have to steep it for a really long time because cold water isn't very good at pulling the flavors out of the grounds iced coffee is hot coffee made strong and then rapidly chilled by Brewing directly onto iced that way you tend to get all of the complexity of the sort of the coffee because it was brewed with hot water but you get a nice chilled delicious beverage at the end of it cold brew is generally less kind of complex and interesting and has a kind of cold brew taste that some people really like and other people especially those who work in the coffee industry tend to identify as a slightly oxidized and stale taste in coffee and they get very angry about cold brew however a lot of people think cold brew is better for their stomachs they like the taste if you enjoy cold brew enjoy cold brew but if you really love cold coffee I would recommend at least trying iced coffee TS Organics asks what climate is best for growing coffee the best climate for coffee has a couple of really important things it has warm sunny days and then cool evenings you tend to find that at higher altitudes the lower altitudes will get lots of sun but they won't have the cool evenings the reason you want this kind of diurnal swing as they call it between days and nights is that you want to feed the the fruit of the tree with loads of sunshine but then you want cool night to slow the maturation process that gives you a denser coffee seed and more complex ultimately cup of coffee at the end of it so the best most valued most kind of delicious coffees tend to come from countries that have tons of very high altitude from Colombia or Panama or Costa Rica Ethiopia Kenya countries like that then you also have these weird little sort of exceptions to the rule which are called Island coffee so places like Hawaii where you have less altitude but because it's an island and you get the cool Sea Breeze coming in the evenings you get this kind of matching climate where you have warm sunny days and cool nights on to the next one lab splaining asks okay I have an important question for coffee drinkers how much coffee do you put in your coffee what's your grounds to water ratio because apparently compared to my friends I drink pure Rocket Fuel so now I'm curious firstly when it comes to Coffee to water ratios there's no correct answer it's basically preference but there are some guidelines that work for most people I would recommend people Brew 60 grams of coffee per liter of water or if you turn it back into a ratio one part coffee to 16 Parts water but it could be 15 to 17. that's the kind of rough area there to help you with this I would strongly recommend a kitchen scale like this one the reason I like these is that I'm usually making coffee before I've had coffee and I don't really want to think about the coffee making process but if I know just how much coffee to put in how much water to put in I'll get it right every single time and I'll be very kind to myself so these cheap essential good for cooking get a set of scales Philip Brown asks does grinding your own coffee beans make much of a difference to the taste it makes a huge difference to The Taste if there was one thing that I could sort of make everyone in the world do it would be grind their own coffee beans fresh it is delightful they smell amazing and your drink tastes so much better I feel like almost everyone owns a pepper grinder you're willing to do like a little bit of work for a tiny component of one dish and coffee that's the only ingredient and you get all the benefits it tastes better more complex more delicious more enjoyable and you get the smell I said like extra bonus grinding your own coffee is a wonderful thing satnam asks there's no real difference between a latte flat white and cappuccino is there we're just humoring them no no there's a difference they all have different histories and and they have some key differences in terms of strength as well as texture a latte is is probably the weakest of the drinks there it's a Milky coffee it might have a thin layer of foam conversely a cappuccino should be a much stronger drink it should have a nice thick moussey layer of foam on top if it's good now the flat white The antibiian Invention lives between those two things it's the texture of a latte but the strength of a cappuccino in terms of histories the oldest drink by far is the cappuccino and it's not Italian it's Austrian back then it was called and caputsina and it was just black coffee and milk mixed to the color of the Capuchin Monk's robes which is very specific Caffe Latte really is kind of an American invention that sort of happened when coffee spread outside of Italy latte macchiato exists in Italy maybe but the flat white that's antibodyian and they argue the kiwis and the Aussies about who invented it we don't know but that's their invention probably in the 1990s Bob Hyatt asked okay coffee snobs help me in my ignorance the difference between drip coffee and pour over coffee is well not that much in terms of the finished drink they're the same thing it's kind of down to how they're made if you see pour over in a cafe that's probably an individually made cup of coffee where you have something like a cone uh coffee inside and someone's pouring water over the top of it drip is kind of the category of filter coffee and it can come from a batch Brew it can come from a pour over a Mr Coffee at home that's all making drip coffee pour over is just like the fancy subset within drip coffee van vicious asks I was thinking that maybe siphon for coffee brewing works the same like a bone eh hashtag bong coffee weed can't speak to Bong usage but I will show you how a siphon works because it is a lot of fun gonna need a few different bits for this though this is the fanciest way to heat a siphon this is a halogen light heater and then this is a siphon and it works in a lovely way it's a nice science demonstration we're going to start with putting some hot water in the base of this thing start to get it hot and then we're going to put this piece in here because these little balls here act as a nucleation point if you boil water in a smooth vessel you can actually super heat the water and and that's bad don't do that so once the water starts to boil we'll put this top piece on that will create a seal in this bottom chamber and as the water boils it creates Steam and that steam is going to expand and push the water through the tube up into this top section here where we can add coffee and we can Brew so this is clever because even though this water is boiling hot this water isn't boiling hot and it's kind of a nice temperature for brewing coffee so you can reduce the heat a little bit here and then we're going to add our coffee give it a little mix all those grounds to be nice and wet now this is one of the most enjoyable Brews to sort of smell as you go at the start smells kind of harsh and piny and resinous and after about a minute it will start to smell really sweet and you kind of know the Brew is pretty much done and at the end of The Brew this is the fun bit when you turn off the heat here that steam is going to start to cool and it'll start to contract and it will create a kind of negative pressure that will start to suck the grounds and the water through the filter will end up with our delicious brewed coffee down at the bottom here and you're ready to pour and enjoy your siphon brewed coffee guaranteed to impress your friends though not something you want to do every morning perfect daily G asks full immersion or filter coffee what's your favorite now this refers to the kind of two big schools of coffee brewing that are out there let me show you examples of each one you've got full immersion and that's like a French press where all of the coffee and all the water hang out together for a while and then you separate and strain them versus filtered coffee that's usually more of a percolation and there you're pouring water onto a bed of coffee and the water is sort of passing through and percolating through it and these can be a little bit more difficult to get right these are very easy ways to make a coffee and so I love a French press for being really really simple effortless and a wonderful way to brew almost any coffee really well so from an ease perspective definitely love full emotion brewing a question from at fizz LOL or B4 can you eat raw coffee beans I mean you can you shouldn't don't chew them they're really hard raw cough is much much harder it's a plant seed and it's quite big it's about the size of a peanut so don't chew it you might crack a tooth but if you ingest it yeah it's just going to pass right through you that's what seeds are designed to do so you know some people have chosen to drink the results don't do that don't do that coffee fruit however if you get the chance to eat fresh coffee fruit from a tree is delicious they look like grapes but they're mostly seed and they're kind of Tangy watermelony delicious little fruits definitely eat those David alvarezi asks who invented coffee I want to kiss you but after this poop I just had coffee this is a great question because we don't know it's really interesting we kind of have no idea of this really important moment in Humanity's history we know that people were drinking coffee in the 15th century in and around Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula and we know that before that in Ethiopia where the sort of Coffee Tree first flourished people were eating coffee fruit from the tree but this moment where someone was like I'm gonna take the seeds from this fruit squeeze them out I'm going to dry them then I'm gonna I'm gonna roast them then I'm gonna smash them to little pieces then I'm going to put it in hot water and then I'm going to drink that hot water that moment of Genius we have no idea when and where that happened Tommy Udo asks is it possible or desirable to roast your own coffee beans at home in a domestic gas oven well it's possible I would not say it's desirable I have a little bit of raw coffee here that's raw coffee it's pale it's green it's a very dense plant seed now the roasting process is where a bunch of magic happens it's where it goes from tasting like a plant to tasting like a delicious cup of coffee you can do it in an oven but that coffee won't roast evenly the bits in contact with your baking sheet will sort of roast a lot faster because the convection of the air and the conduction of the pan itself a commercial roaster will constantly churn and toss and move the coffee around to make sure that it's roasting evenly and uneven roasts tend to taste harsh bitter charcoal and a little bit burnt but it can be done and people do do it so feel free to experiment but I warn you if you think coffee is a weird hobby coffee roasting is is far more of a terrifying rabbit hole at Darren Shaw asks should you freeze your coffee beans and I would say yes yes you should freeze your coffee beans if you're going to store them for a long time if you've got way too much coffee in the house and you're not going to get through it in the next few weeks package it up sort of airtight that's kind of important and then freeze it it'll keep a really long time in the freezer you can grab find from Frozen but I wouldn't recommend kind of opening a bag and pulling out a handful of beans at a time if you're going to sort of brew a bag pull it out you can defrost it it's fine you can use it from Frozen that first time it doesn't really matter but freezing the coffee beans is definitely a very good thing don't bother putting them in the fridge don't put ground coffee in the fridge that doesn't really slow down the Sterling process and you can kind of cross-contaminate you can make your food smell of coffee and your coffee smell like the food in your fridge so freezer is good cupboard is okay fridge is bad in it ink asks why are they putting Nitro in my coffee what's happening well they're doing it for two reasons firstly it looks really cool you get that kind of Guinness effect a kind of nice foamy head it looks beautiful and then they're doing it for the same reason that kind of beer does it in that it adds some really nice texture to the finished drink you end up drinking this kind of black coffee that somehow almost creamy like a cappuccino that's mostly it I think beer pioneered this stuff and coffee was like we can use the same equipment and do the same thing and the results are pretty fun so a very common question from Food Express Inc is coffee actually good for for you and I think we can say with a decent degree of certainty yes yes coffee is good for you now there's a load of different studies done on coffee and and we've got good data saying coffee is good for the microbiome it contains a surprising amount of fiber coffee is good for your heart we see reductions in heart disease as well as arrhythmias there's lots of supporting evidence from loads of different studies around the world that says Coffee drinkers live longer but and this is a really important but that doesn't mean you should just drink as much coffee as you want the moment that coffee starts to interrupt or disrupt your sleep that's too much coffee and it's now bad for you again so that's the sort of Line in the Sand the minute you start to struggle to go to sleep or have decreased Sleep Quality that's when you need to dial back your caffeine consumption coffee fiend ma asks what is the difference between hashtag coffee and hashtag espresso espresso is a very small very strong cup of coffee brewed from incredibly finely ground coffee under high pressure at high temperatures so it's like an intense extract of coffee typically it's brewed at nine bars of pressure which may not mean much to anyone about 100 130 PSI and you do that because when you grow in the coffee really really really fine you need to sort of push the water to be able to get it through the coffee now I've got some samples of grounds here espresso ground coffee it's not quite flower fine but if you sort of pinch it it will retain its shape it's really pretty fine whereas for drip it's more like a coarser sugar kind of thing you can feel much bigger pieces between your fingers and with espresso you're going to use a lot less water because you need less water because there's a lot more flavor exposed in the grounds by grinding them so finely so that's the definition of espresso a small amount of liquid tons of coffee flavor brewed Under Pressure which also gives it a lovely red Brown foam on top called chroma and it must be done under those High pressures at Katie business 33 asks I think I burnt my coffee is that even a thing and the answer would be maybe it depends how you think you burn your coffee if you think you burn your coffee by putting boiling water on it and you've got a kind of burnt harsh taste no you didn't burn it that flavor is just in the coffee already and the very hot water extracted the flavor out of it however if you think you burnt it by putting it on a hot plate for half an hour an hour then yes you kind of did you kind of cooked it you generated a bunch of new tastes in the liquid and yeah it's going to taste harsh bitter and present and then yes you did burn your coffee Marcia Harold asks I have a question since I'm not a parent at what age do you start letting kids drink coffee there's not like a rule here there's actually no real guidance uh I read at one point schooled in Brazil were giving coffee to children to help them concentrate in math lessons kids as young as nine so you know from a from a biology perspective nothing particularly bad is going to happen but if you have a traumatic bedtime most evenings I suspect giving your children caffeine is not a very good idea young salami boy asks mistakenly got sugar in my coffee absolutely disgusting who does this a lot of people put sugar in coffee now sugar doesn't reduce bitterness but a lot of bad coffee can also be quite sour and at that point sugar is kind of making things a little bit better the way that sugar makes lemon into lemonade so sugar does balance out acidity make the whole thing more enjoyable and ultimately a little sugar helps the medicine go down but if your coffee is good to start with if it's well brewed if it's you know fresh it should have a nice natural sweetness it shouldn't be dominantly acidic or bitter then then sugar kind of makes it all kind of out of sorts out of balance and it does indeed ruin it so good coffee needs no sugar but if you like a little sugar in your coffee because you like sweet things then go right ahead at mollywood asks why does coffee taste gross when you microwave it and it's not just microwaves if you reheat coffee from say cold back to kind of hot again what you're doing is feeding in a bunch of energy and getting a bunch of chemistry going again and that chemistry generates new flavor compounds those are often quite harsh astringent and bitter and so you just want to avoid reheating coffee sadly if it's gone cold there's not much you can do to make it taste good again VidCon asks how many cups of coffee a day is too much and this is a difficult one to answer I'll give you what we know there is a guideline from most places saying for caffeine consumption 200 to 300 milligrams a day is your recommended dose that's great except you have no idea how much caffeine is in the particular cup of coffee that you're drinking and two competing businesses will sell let's say two cappuccinos that will have wildly different amounts of caffeine been in them in addition to this there is a genetic component some people are fast caffeine metabolizers some people are slow caffeine metabolizers so generally speaking for most types of coffee out there three or four cups a day is probably fine unless it's messing with your sleep some people can drink more and feel absolutely fine they can have a double espresso after dinner and go straight to sleep they are the fortunate for you but for most people three four cups a day I would say it is a good sort of level to aim at at aimer Anna asks what makes Turkish coffee has this strong spice taste to it well the strong bit is is how you grind coffee for Turkish Brewing you grind it almost as fine as flour so it's going to be very strong because you're going to get all the flavor out of those grounds secondly it is not unusual to add spices to the pot as you're Brewing cardamom is very common and that will obviously give it a delicious sort of spicy twist add salt grumpy asks Irish whiskey in my coffee good for a cough suppressor right I can't speak to that aspect of it if that works for you that's great it is delicious though I think whiskey and coffee are totally good friends and not just Irish whiskey always whiskey eat some coffee I think can play very nicely recommended if you haven't tried it and finally akshar asks what happened to dalgona Coffee you're moved on so quick well they let us go outside again I think that was a key part of this dog owner blew up during the pandemic when we were stuck inside and it involved things that most people had at home it was instant coffee sugar and a little bit of water a whisk and spare time we all had those things and I think dog owner was the perfect coffee treat for the time however as fun as it is it's not particularly delicious and I think once we could start going to cafes again and enjoying the great coffee scene we wanted to do that all right those are the questions that was coffee support I hope you learned something I hope you're in the mood to go and brew a cup of coffee and enjoy it thanks so much for watching I hope you have a great day

Channel: WIRED

Views: 2,170,624

Keywords: coffee, coffee explained, coffee interview, coffee support, cold brew, dark roast, espresso, espresso explained, hames joffmann, iced coffee, innovation, james hoffmann, james hoffmann coffee, ott tech support, pour over, science & technology, wired

Id: pjJqOgFyCxI

Length: 22min 14sec (1334 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 08 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Cyber--Bob]

This fucked me up lately as I realized I’d been brewing light and dark roast coffees at the same temp. God bless James Hoffman.

[u/acreativeredditlogin]

Watched it earlier today, it was super interesting

[u/NotThisTime1993]

My local coffee shop thinks the ideal temp is “burn your lips off”. I’ve just stopped ordering hot coffee there

[u/whitacre]

What’s the ideal temp?

[u/depwnz]

I was at a coffee expo yesterday when UCC showcased an instant coffee that dissolves in cold water. It tastes wrong though.

[u/FilecakeAbroad]

Bit sad that he didn’t speak to Kopi Luwak. An extremely common question to get from smug people outside the industry and absolutely worth putting out to pasture once and for all.

[u/Nine_Eye_Ron]

Pour myself a big mug of instant and watch his stuff, so satisfying

[u/LEJ5512]

So, wait… regarding the first question about caffeine in lighter vs darker roasts…

He first says that lighter-roasted beans contain more caffeine because it hasn’t been evaporated (sublimated) out yet. Cool, I get that part.

Then he says that because dark-roasted beans are less dense, then for the same mass, you get more of them, so that offsets the lower caffeine content of each bean.

I’m confused about why dark-roasted beans are less dense. Do they simply lose mass? Or do they also expand?

In other words: does 20g of light roast contain the same number of beans as 20g of dark roast? Or the other way of thinking: does a pile of fifty light-roasted beans weigh more than a pile of fifty dark-roasted beans?

[u/TheGuyThatDoesHisJob]

Well done, James!