Christopher Nolan's mind-bending "Memento" earned him his first ever Oscar nomination back in 2002. Eight nominations and 22 long years later, he finally grabbed two golden statues for "Oppenheimer" at the 2024 Oscars.

3 Coffee Facts

1. The MiiCoffee Apex is a white-labelled espresso machine that boasts an impressive set of features like PID and flow control at just $500. Could this be the new budget king?

2. As green coffee ages it starts to taste woody when roasted and brewed. How quickly it ages depends on various factors but the three main ones are how it was processed, dried and stored.

3. Unlike a boiler in an espresso machine, a thermoblock does not store water but draws it directly from the tank and flash heats it by passing it through a maze of pipes so it’s up to the desired temperature once it reaches the group head or the steam wand.

1 Fun Thing

Our video Learn To Pour won a Sprudgie in the Best Coffee Video/Film category!

3 Coffee Facts

1. Recent research by professor Tim Spector has shown that certain cruciferous vegetables like broccoli can quite dramatically reduce the effects of caffeine. So the next time you’ve had a cuppa late in the day you know what you should be cooking for dinner!

2. When brewing coffee, as a general rule of thumb, the finer you grind the less you want to agitate and the coarser you go the more you want agitate.

3. Espresso machines like the Slayer and Lelit Bianca sport a paddle that moves a needle valve to control the rate at which water exits the group head. This can be used to flow profile a shot of espresso and get a more optimal extraction.

The megalodon was not only the biggest shark in the world but also one of the largest fish ever to exist. Estimates suggest they actually grew to between 15 and 18 meters in length, three times longer than the largest recorded great white shark.

3 Coffee Facts

1. Many espresso machines feature cold touch steam wands where the outside of the wand doesn’t get hot. This not only helps prevent accidents but also prevents milk from scorching, making it much easier to keep clean.

2. A quick tip to improve your latte art is to steam with a smaller pitcher so you don’t risk spluttering and over-aerating, but then transfer to a larger pitcher which both grooms the milk and allows you to swirl and incorporate the microfoam better before you pour.

3. The well-known Japanese brand Cafec recently launched a very interesting brewer called the DEEP 27. It’s a pour-over dripper with an extremely narrow angle of just 27 degrees, allowing one to achieve well-extracted brews with doses as low as 8g. The narrow angle also means that you just need to pour in the center, making it a simpler brewer to use.

NASA and Lockheed Martin formally debuted the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft last Friday, over 20 years after Concorde’s final flight. Using this one-of-a-kind experimental airplane, NASA aims to gather data that could revolutionise air travel, paving the way for a new generation of commercial aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound.

3 Coffee Facts

1. As we demonstrated in our latest video, there’s a lot of information on a bag of specialty soffee like roast date, roast degree etc… that can give you a pretty good idea of how to brew it even before you pull a shot.

2. Temperature controlled kettles are more accurate when filled to half their capacity or higher. Putting too little water will cause it to heat up too quickly and overshoot the target temperature and also generally be less accurate overall.

3. As seen in James’ recent video, the process of decaffeination permanently alters the internal structure of the green bean making them more porous. This means they need to be roasted very differently and also age much quicker once roasted.

2024 is a leap year! A 365 day calendar year is actually a rounded number. It takes Earth 365.242190 days (365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds) to orbit the Sun. Those extra 5h48m56s need to be accounted for which is why we add a day every 4 years. If we didn’t account for this extra time, seasons would begin to drift and over a period of about 700 years our summers, which we’ve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December!

3 Coffee Facts

1. The turn of the year has heralded some big specialty coffee acquisitions and business moves. After Chobani’s recent $900 million acquisition of La Colombe at the end of 2023, Italy’s De’Longhi SpA is purchasing a 41.2% stake in the espresso equipment brand La Marzocco for $374 million.

2. The Gaggia Classic and Classic Pro are some of the most modded espresso machines in the world. The mod is to swap out the stock OPV spring for a 9 bar one so you can brew with an unpressurised basket and get good tasting shots. The ultimate mod is the Gagguino that essentially converts it something like a Decent espresso machine.

3. An easy way to get better coffee with your grinder is to slow feed the beans. Turn the grinder on and drop in a few beans at a time instead of dumping the whole dose in. This prevents beans from continually being mashed as they wait for the grounds below to exit the burrs, and therefore results in slightly coarser but more evenly ground coffee.

Certain species of female sharks, often those in captivity and zoos, develop the ability to self-fertilize their eggs when there is no access to a male. This is called parthenogenesis and was recently observed in an epaulette shark.

3 Coffee Facts

1. When grinding coffee different burrs don’t just produce different particle size distributions, they also produce differently shaped grounds. For example, some turn out more rounded while others are more sharp and this is another factor that plays heavily into your overall cup profile.

2. If your grinder came with a plasma generator and it isn’t working as well as it did when you got it then it’s probably time to clean it. The pins can get covered in fines and chaff over time making them less effective at reducing static. Luckily all you need to do is brush them clean every once in a while and you should be good.

3. When using the WDT tool you’ll notice that some fines go through the holes and fall out of the basket. Now a portion of these cling to the outside of the basket and can make it into your espresso shot. To avoid that just give the bottom of the basket a quick wipe before pulling your shot — another reason to get a bottomless portafilter.

In the spirit of the holiday season, we thought everyone should know that you can actually mail a letter to Santa’s postal code in Canada. The address is — Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0, Canada. And word has it, he even writes back!

3 Coffee Facts

1. Weber Workshops just launched their first ever brewer called the BIRD, short for Brew In Reverse Direction. It looks a lot like a French Press but in fact uses a piston actuated vacuum to suck water through a puck of coffee and create a rich and complex brew.

2. Have you noticed that paper filtered pour over coffee starts out looking very clear but gets cloudier as time passes. We still don’t know exactly why this happens but it’s fascinating none the less.

3. The DF range of grinders are manufactured by a company in China and sold all over the world under various brands names like Turin, G-Iota and so on. The unbelievably low prices made them explode in popularity and while the earlier versions felt cheap and clunky they’ve come a long way. We even got to test and review the DF64 Gen 2 and DF83 V2!

If an egg sinks in water then it’s fresh, but why is this? Eggs contain a tiny air sack on the inside that give the embryo room and air to breathe, and as the egg ages this sack gets larger making it more buoyant.

3 Coffee Facts

1. A fascinating paper published by Christopher Hendon and other scientists studies the effects of static build up from both friction and fracturing when grinding coffee, on espresso. They found that adding a few sprays of water to the beans prior to grinding, substantially reduced clumps, slowed down brew time and increased extraction. These tests were done using an EK43 grinder.

2. Many home grinders today come equipped with bellows to blow out any grounds and reduce retention, but you’re also blowing out a lot of fines and chaff. A better way to use the bellows is to grind ~0.5g more than you need, brew your coffee, then use the bellows to clear out any retained grounds and discard them. This will give you cleaner and tastier cups.

3. Here’s a quick tip to get more consistent espresso — once your puck prep is done and you’ve tamped, be very careful to not knock your portafilter anywhere, especially when locking it into the group-head. This can cause a crack in the puck and lead to severe channeling.

Gallium is a really interesting metal that’s completely solid at room temperature but has a very low meting point of just 30°C. Hold it in your hand and it will soon melt and resemble mercury, but luckily it is not nearly as toxic and is much safer to handle.

3 Coffee Facts

1. You may think of white coffee as coffee with a lot of milk, but it also “refers to the roast level of the coffee bean, leaving the finished product closer to white than brown”. It is thought to have originated in Yemen, where the mixture of ultra-lightly-roasted coffee and spices is a traditional way to consume coffee. Most home grinders and ceramic burr grinders would struggle to grind the coffee because of how hard and dense the beans are.

2. When pouring latte art don’t let your pitcher sit around once you’re done texturing. This will allow the micro foam to rise to the top and form a thick layer, making it very hard to pour — keep swirling the milk in the pitcher until you’re ready to pour.

3. Tim Wendelboe recently developed a new recipe for the famous restaurant, Noma, that uses an espresso machine to create a filter style brew for increased consistency. It starts with pulling a very long, paper filtered shot — 23g in and 180ml out. This is then filtered again through a V60 paper filter to remove any fines and then diluted down to around 1.8 TDS. The result is a high clarity brew with a little higher strength and body than a regular pour over.

Octopi are one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet and apart from having 8 arms and 3 hearts, another interesting fact is their blood is blue because it's copper based, since that's more efficient in cold, low oxygen environments.

3 Coffee Facts

1. Research by scientist Samo Smrke has shown that blooming coffee at lower temperatures helps retain many of the volatile organic compounds that would have otherwise evaporated. In theory, this should result in a more aroma rich and sweeter cup of coffee.

2. This is not very common but some conical burr grinders like the Mx Cool Aries and Baratza Sette have a rotating collar burr, while the central cone burr remains fixed. This allows for a shorter grind path by eliminating the need for a central shaft.

3. When grinding coffee, the process of altering the RPM in a very precise way in order achieve a specific particle size distribution is known as RPM profiling.

Paramount has a 9+ minute video on how the biggest stunt in cinema history was filmed — showing Ethan Hunt (Tom cruise) driving a motorcycle off a cliff in Norway and seamlessly transitioning to a base jump. The production claims he did over 500 practice skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps to work out the kinks and collect data that would allow the actual filming to be as predictable as possible.

3 Coffee Facts

1. Did you know that the height of the water column above the bed of coffee when brewing a pour over has a direct impact on how fast the water flows through? So pouring fast and reducing the number of pours will give you quicker draw downs and than if you use slower or more number of pours.

2. This is a simplification of a rather complex topic, but according to Darcy's Law, the flow rate of water through the bed decreases with the distance it has to travel. A deeper bed will therefore require more time for the water to flow through it, resulting in slower brews.

3. In the world of espresso, small changes in grind size have a big impact on shot times and taste. This is why espresso grinders are either step-less or have very small steps (<15 microns) to adjust grind size, giving the user a lot more fine control to dial in their shots.

As a tribute to Matthew Perry’s passing, here’s a couple of fun facts about Friends. In their original contract, the actors were paid $22,500 per episode, and different salaries in season two. For the final two years, they were paid a whopping $1 million per episode. It also wasn’t always going to be called Friends with working titles including Insomnia Café, Friends Like Us, and Six of One.

3 Coffee Facts

1. On close inspection you may notice that the holes on say a 20g basket are a tad larger than the ones in a 15g basket. This is intentionally done to compensate for the increased resistance that a larger dose offers.

2. Unimodal style burrs can be used to brew espresso but are also challenging as they produce very few fines. They need to be very well aligned and you need to grind a lot finer and be way more meticulous with your puck prep… but get it right and your palate will thank you!

3. Reducing the headspace between the puck and shower screen prevents swelling and has shown to greatly increase body in your shot of espresso.

Greyson Nekrutman is an incredibly talented drummer from Long Island, New York and is being compared to the legendary Buddy Rich. Only 19 years old, he has played with Paul Simon’s bassist, Bakithi Kumalo and to New York metro area venues.

3 Coffee Facts

1. Temperature surfing is the process of flushing the group head on machines that run too hot, to bring the temperature down and then time the shot perfectly as the water heats back up to the desired temperature. It takes a bit of practice but is usually worth the effort in the cup.

2. Modbar make unique espresso machines that feature an “under-the-counter” module leaving just the grouphead exposed above the bar. While it has it’s own set of issues it’s undeniably cool looking and frees up a ton of room on the counter.

3. Precise Brew, a company based in Greece, has developed some really interesting filters using its own special fabric. They use an ultrasonic welding process that weaves together strands of a proprietary recyclable polymer fibre with micron-level precision and claim that these can be reused up to a 1000 times.

Owls are capable of flying just inches from their prey without being detected. Specialized feathers of the owl (comb-like serrations on wing feathers) enable near-silent flight by altering air turbulence and absorbing noise. Sound is further dampened by the feathers’ velvety texture. They have large wings relative to their body mass, which let them fly as slowly as 2mph (!) for a large species like the Barn Owl by gliding noiselessly with little flapping.

3 Coffee Facts

1. By definition an acid is a molecule that can donate a proton. Coffee is acidic and the perception of this acidity happens when a donated proton strikes your taste receptors as you sip on your coffee. When your water has a buffer or bicarbonate, many of these protons are donated to the bicarbonate. This means fewer protons to react with your taste receptors and therefore less perceived acidity.

2. A new study in the journal Science Advances examines how climate change is affecting pollinators and found that, as temperatures increase, combined with shrinking habitats—the total number of pollinators decreases by 61%. While Arabica coffee is self-pollinating, it still relies heavily on these insects for maximal production. The countries expected to be most affected by pollinator loss include Brazil, Indonesia, India, China, the Philippines, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

3. We just published a video on the Weiss Distribution Technique and in our testing we realised not all needles are made equal. 0.25mm was too flimsy and 0.4 too stiff. 0.3mm however, had the perfect balance of strength and flexibility, meaning it was able to distribute well without getting damaged or bent too easily.

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concert film became a box office blockbuster a week before hitting cinemas with global advance ticket sales topping $100m. That makes it the most profitable concert film in history.

3 Coffee Facts

1. The EU’s new law banning the import of commodities, including coffee, linked to deforestation has industry professionals worried that it may end up impacting producers the most. Countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, Peru, Guatemala, etc that have “inadequate infrastructure and low levels of traceability” may see less demand from Europe, which may force those producers to sell to countries that don’t have the same level of traceability requirements, thus negating the intent of the law: decreasing deforestation.

2. Flavour experiences are heavily influenced by our EXPECTATIONS before we actually taste the food. These expectations are automatically triggered by what we see, hear, touch, and smell orthonasally, and come from both ‘intrinsic’ (colour, aroma, etc) and ‘extrinsic’ (utensils, packaging, branding, etc).

3. The Mahlkönig EK 43, the one-time spice grinder, has spent the last decade as THE go-to coffee grinder at high-end cafes the world over. Ahead of the hospitality event Host Milan, the German manufacturer has released the Mahlkonig EK Omnia with massive 98mm cast steel flat burrs. There are three grind modes — Classic (manual); Time, similar to time-based dosing in other Mahlkönig espresso grinders; and Library, consisting of 10 programmable settings that automatically dial in the Omnia to the pre-saved grind size via the new pre-dosing hopper.

Even in today's fast paced world of technology, police in India's eastern state of Odisha are preserving a flock of carrier pigeons for use when disasters sever communication links. Dating from the days of British colonial rule, the state's carrier pigeon service employs more than 100 Belgian Homer pigeons.

3 Coffee Facts

1. Seattle-based food tech startup Atomo Coffee are calling their new launch the world’s “first beanless espresso,” made from largely natural ingredients, including caffeine. They claim it tastes like coffee, without any coffee beans. The company, which has raised more than $50 million until now centre their pitch on the idea that “beanless coffee” is more environmentally sustainable than coffee produced from coffee trees.

2. Equipment brand Hiroia is releasing an automated home pourover brewer called the Hiraku V60 Smart Brewer. Coffee’s latest Kickstarter has been funded over $210,000 so far and is making the rounds with coffee’s influencers. With a programmable water delivery platform, this machine can brew up to 580 milliliters (19.6 fluid ounces) of Hario V60 pourover-style coffee at once.

3. Coffee is one of the most popular beverages with 85% of Americans consuming an average cup of coffee containing anywhere from 40 to 150 mg of caffeine. Lethal doses of caffeine, however, have been reported at blood concentrations of 80 to 100 micrograms/ml, which can be reached with ingestion of approximately 10 grams or greater.

Birds engage in a fascinating behavior called anting, where they rub insects, especially ants, on their feathers and skin. This can be done actively by picking up insects and applying them to their body or passively by lying in an area with abundant insects and performing dust-bathing-like movements. The insects secrete chemicals like formic acid, which possess insecticidal, miticidal, fungicidal, or bactericidal properties, providing potential benefits for the birds' health and plumage maintenance.

Source: https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1708074449268810207

3 Coffee Facts

1. Every 4-5 years, the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) organises a World Coffee Conference meant to facilitate discussions around the coffee industry. In 2023, this event was held in Asia for the first time ever — in India, in conjuction with the Indian Coffee Board and the Ministry of Commerce in India.

2. Bewild is the food produce arm of Beforest Lifestyle Solutions, which facilitates and manages sustainable food forests and housing collectives that are food water and power secure. Bewild currently has a coffee collective that sells exclusively specialty robusta, grown in the wild alongside other crops like pepper, mangoes, avocado etc.

3. Victoria Arduino, the professional coffee equipment company, is enhancing the Eagle One experience with VIS – Virtual Intelligent Scale. This scale is based on an artificial intelligence algorithm that favours a faster workflow and performs dose monitoring for every shot. By setting the desired weight in grams, the VIS automatically monitors the flow to obtain the right dose in the cup. 

Though we see the term in memes and astrology blurbs, Mercury being in retrograde is a planetary phenomenon where Mercury appears to be moving backwards. This is an optical illusion because Mercury, which usually moves faster than the Earth, slows down therefore giving the appearance of moving backwards.

3 Coffee Facts

1. Organic food sales in the US have nearly doubled from $31 billion to $61.7 billion from 2013 to 2022. This includes roughly $2.3 billion for coffee, making the change in USDA certification very important for coffee too. Starting March 2024, not just farms, but all sales brokers, commodity traders, importers and exporters of organic coffee will have to be certified. Previously, these actors used to be excluded from the requirement of organic certification.

2. Taiwanese company MxCool has launched a high end grinder called Aries that houses massive 83mm conical burrs and sports some nifty features like a powerful motor, easy disassembly and variable rpm to really help improve workflow.

3. World Coffee Research released a free poster of key coffee varieties from 22 countries around the world. It visually represents over 100 coffee varieties from the two most widely cultivated species glob­al­ly—C. ara­bi­ca (known as Ara­bi­ca), and C. canepho­ra (known as Robusta).

   

The earliest known recorded sound of a human voice was in 1860 when Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville recorded someone singing the song Au Clair de la Lune using a device called the phonoautograph. This device transcribed sound waves as undulations or other deviations in a line traced on smoke-blackened paper or glass.

3 Coffee Facts

1. Much like the Moonraker by Weber Workshops, the AutoComb by BHTools is a distribution tool that aims at making the process of WDT quicker and more consistent. It primarily aims at making it viable in high traffic commercial environments.

2. Recent experiments by Jonathan Gagné have led him to believe that fines never really over extract as they give up all soluble material almost instantly when they come in contact with water. He speculates that poorly soluble compounds that taste bad, stick to the fines (and other particles) and can end up being dislodged when brewing if they’re agitated too much.

3. When dialling in a light roast espresso, a slightly longer ratio of ~1:2.5 is good place to start as these coffees are less porous and therefore require more water to fully extract them.

The 4th and final Grand Slam tournament, the US Open, was in fact played on grass courts from 1881 to 1974. In 1975 this was switched to clay, but just for 2 years and it has been played on hard courts since 1978. From 1884 through 1911, the tournament used a challenge system whereby the defending champion automatically qualified for the next year's final (!) where he would play the winner of the all-comers tournament.

3 Coffee Facts

1. When processing coffee, adding fruit to the fermentation tank doesn’t mean that the coffee will eventually taste of that fruit. What you’re essentially doing is getting the yeast and bacteria present on the fruit to also contribute to the fermentation process, possibly leading to interesting flavours in the cup.

2. Fascinating research by coffee scientist Samo Smrke shows how roasted coffee is affected by pressure changes during air travel. Bags that were sealed with the valve taped were the least affected. One that had a functioning valve essentially became vacuum packed by degassing quicker. Coffee transported in normal bags showed accelerated signs of ageing.

3. A bean doser as the name suggests doses beans. It is a niche product that allows you to fill a hopper with coffee beans and have it spit out a specified weight to beans. This is useful at a roastery where they are used to dose bags of coffee, or can be used to pre dose small amounts like 18g in containers so you can skip the step of having to weigh the beans for every brew.