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In search of origins

Amaje coffee
Buriso Amaje Coffee from Ethiopia via Amoret Coffee in Notting Hill. The Jimma 74158 and 74160 varietals are selections from coffee grown in the wild.

It was a goat herder named Kaldi, so the story goes, who first noticed the effect of coffee beans on the the energy levels of his goats. After telling the local abbot of his observations, the monks at the nearby monastery realised that this drink could help them stay awake during prayer and so the reputation, and consumption, of coffee spread from Ethiopia and then throughout the world.

While the details may be questionable, there is evidence that the coffee plant originated in Ethiopia. Coffee still grows wild in parts of Ethiopia and the oldest varietals are also to be found there. And so, when I realised that my latest coffee was an Ethiopian Natural of varietal Jimma 74158 and 74160, roasted by Amoret coffee in Notting Hill, I thought, why not do a coffee-physics review rather than a cafe-physics review? For there are always surprising links to physics when you stop to think about them, whether you are in a cafe or sampling a new bag of beans.

This particular coffee was grown by Buriso Amaje in the Bensa District of the Sidama region of Ethiopia. The varietals were selections from the Jimma Research Centre from wild plants that showed resistance to coffee berry disease and were also high yielding. Grown at an altitude of 2050m, the naturally processed coffee came with tasting notes of “Blueberry muffin, white chocolate” and “rose petal” among others. Brewed through a V60, it is immediately clear it is a naturally processed coffee, the complex aroma of a rich natural released with the bloom. Indeed, the bloom was fantastically lively with the grounds rising up with the gas escaping beneath them in a manner reminiscent of bubbling porridge (but much more aromatic). And while I lack the evocative vocabulary of Amoret’s tasting notes, the fruity and sweet notes were obvious, with blueberry a clear descriptive term while I would also go for jasmine and a slight molasses taste. A lovely coffee.

Brewing it again with an Aeropress, the tasting notes were different. We could start to ponder how the brew method affects the flavour profile. But then we could go further, how would this coffee taste if brewed using the Ethiopian coffee ceremony? Which leads to further questions about altogether different origins. Where did this come from and how do our methods of experiencing something emphasise some aspects while reducing others? Ethiopia offers a rich thought current if we consider how things originated because it is not just known for its coffee, Ethiopia is also home to some of the world’s oldest gold mines. Today, one of the larger gold mines in Ethiopia lies just to the North West of where this coffee came from, while a similar distance to the south east is a region rich in tantalum and niobium. We need tantalum for the capacitors used in our electronic devices. In fact, there is most likely tantalum in the device you are using to read this. While niobium is used to strengthen steel and other materials as well as in the superconductors within MRI machines. Where do these materials come from?

The Crab Nebula is what remains of a supernova observed in 1054AD. Explosions like these are the source of elements such as iron. Image courtesy of Bill Schoening/NOAO/AURA/NSF

Within the coffee industry there has been a lot of work done to demonstrate the traceability of the coffee we drink. But we know much less about the elements that form the components of many of the electronic devices that we use every day. And while this leads us into many ethical issues (for example here, here and here), it can also prompt us to consider the question even more fundamentally: where does gold come from? Indeed, where do the elements such as carbon and oxygen that make coffee, ultimately, come from?

The lighter elements, (hydrogen, helium, lithium and some beryllium) are thought to have been made during the Big Bang at the start of our Universe. While elements up to iron, including the carbon that would be found in coffee, have been formed during nuclear fusion reactions within stars (with the more massive stars generating the heavier elements). Elements heavier than iron though cannot be generated through the nuclear fusion reactions within stars and so will have been formed during some form of catastrophic event such as a stellar explosion, a supernova. But there has recently been some discussion about exactly how the elements heavier than iron formed, elements such as the gold, tantalum and niobium mined in Ethiopia.

One theory is that these elements formed in the energies generated when two neutron stars (a type of super-dense and massive star) collide. So when the LIGO detector, detected gravitational waves that were the signature of a neutron star collision, many telescopes were immediately turned to the region of space from which the collision had been detected. What elements were being generated in the aftermath of the collision? Developing a model for the way that the elements formed in such collisions, a group of astronomers concluded that, neutron star collisions could account for practically all of these heavier elements in certain regions of space. But then, a second group of astronomers calculated how long it would take for neutron stars to collide which led to a problem: massive neutron stars take ages to form and don’t collide very often, could they really have happened often enough that we have the elements we see around us now? There is a third possibility, could it be that some of these elements have been formed in a type of supernova explosion that has been postulated but never yet observed? The discussion goes on.

coffee cup Populus
Where did it all come from? Plenty to ponder in the physics of coffee.

The upshot of this is that while we have an idea about the origin of the elements in that they are the result of the violent death of stars, we are a bit unclear about the exact details. Similarly to the story of Kaldi the goat herder and the origins of coffee, we have a good idea but have to fill in the bits that are missing (a slightly bigger problem for the coffee legend). None of this should stop us enjoying our brew though. What could be better than to sip and savour the coffee slowly while pondering the meaning, or origin, of life, the universe and everything? That is surely something that people have done throughout the ages, irrespective of the brew method that we use.

As cafes remain closed, this represents the beginning of a series of coffee-physics reviews. If you find a coffee with a particular physics connection, or are intrigued about what a connection could be, please do share it, either here in the comments section, on Twitter or on Facebook.

Categories
Coffee cup science General Observations Science history slow

Drip coffee

The universe is in a cup of coffee. But how many connections to different bits of physics can you find in the time it takes you to prepare a V60? We explore some of those links below while considering brewing a pour-over, what more do you see in your brew?

1. The Coffee Grinder:

coffee at VCR Bangsar
Preparing a V60 pour over coffee. How many connections can you find?

The beans pile on top of each other in the hopper. As the beans are ground, the bean pile shrinks along slipping layers. Immediately reminiscent of avalanches and landslides, understanding how granular materials (rocks & coffee beans) flow over each other is important for geology and safety. Meanwhile, the grinding itself produces a mound of coffee of slightly varying grain size. Shaking it would produce the brazil nut effect, which you can see on you breakfast table but is also important to understand the dynamics of earthquakes.

Staying at the grinding stage, if you weigh your coffee according to a brew guide, it is interesting to note that the kilogram is the one remaining fundamental unit that is measured with reference to a physical object.

2. Rinsing the filter paper:

V60 chromatography chemistry kitchen
A few hours after brewing pour over, a dark rim of dissolved coffee can be seen at the top of the filter paper. Chromatography in action.

While rinsing the filter we see the process of chromatography starting. Now critical for analytical chemistry (such as establishing each of the components of a medicine), this technique started with watching solutes ascend a filter paper in a solvent.

Filtration also has its connections. The recent discovery of a Roman-era stone sarcophagus in the Borough area of London involved filtering the excavated soil found within the sarcophagus to ensure that nothing was lost during excavation. On the other hand, using the filtered product enabled a recent study to concentrate coffee dissolved in chloroform in order to detect small amounts of rogue robusta in coffee products sold as 100% arabica.

3. Bloom:

bloom on a v60
From coffee to the atmosphere. There’s physics in that filter coffee.

A drop falling on a granular bed (rain on sand, water on ground coffee) causes different shaped craters depending on the speed of the drop and the compactness of the granular bed. A lovely piece of physics and of relevance to impact craters and the pharmaceuticals industry. But it is the bloom that we watch for when starting to brew the coffee. That point where the grinds seem to expand and bubble with a fantastic release of aroma. It is thought that the earth’s early atmosphere (and the atmosphere around other worlds) could have been helped to form by similar processes of outgassing from rocks in the interior of the earth. The carbon cycle also involves the outgassing of carbon dioxide from mid-ocean ridges and the volcanoes on the earth.

As the water falls and the aroma rises, we’re reminded too of petrichor, the smell of rain. How we detect smell is a whole other section of physics. Petrichor is composed of aerosols released when the rain droplet hits the ground. Similar aerosols are produced when rain impacts seawater and produces a splash. These aerosols have been linked to cloud formation. Without aerosols we would have significantly fewer clouds.

4. Percolation:

A close up of some milk rings formed when dripping milk into water. Similar vortex rings will be produced every time you make a pour over coffee.

Percolation is (almost) everywhere. From the way that water filters through coffee grounds to make our coffee to the way electricity is conducted and even to how diseases are transmitted. A mathematically very interesting phenomenon with links to areas we’d never first consider such as modelling the movements of the stock exchange and understanding the beauty of a fractal such as a romanesco broccoli.

But then there’s more. The way water filters through coffee is similar to the way that rain flows through the soil or we obtain water through aquifers. Known as Darcy’s law, there are extensive links to geology.

Nor is it just geology and earth based science that is linked to this part of our coffee making. The drips falling into the pot of coffee are forming vortex rings behind them. Much like smoke rings, they can be found all around us, from volcanic eruptions, through to supernovae explosions and even in dolphin play.

5. In the mug:

Rayleigh Benard cells in clouds
Convection cells in the clouds. Found on a somewhat smaller scale in your coffee.
Image shows clouds above the Pacific. Image NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response

Yet it is when it gets to the mug that we can really spend time contemplating our coffee. The turbulence produced by the hot coffee in a cool mug prompts the question: why does stirring your coffee cool it down but stirring the solar wind heats it up?

The convection cells in the cooling coffee are seen in the clouds of “mackerel” skies and in the rock structure of other planets. The steam informs us of cloud formation while the condensation on the side of the cup is suggestive of the formation of dew and therefore, through a scientific observation over 200 years ago, to the greenhouse effect. The coffee cools according to the same physics as any other cooling body, including the universe itself. Which is one reason that Lord Kelvin could not believe that the earth was old enough for Darwin’s theory of evolution to have occurred. (Kelvin was working before it was known that the Sun was heated by nuclear fusion. Working on the basis of the physics he knew, he calculated how long the Sun would take to cool down for alternative mechanisms of heating the Sun. Eventually he concluded that the Sun was too young for the millions of years required for Darwin’s theory to be correct. It was the basis of a public spat between these two prominent scientists and a major challenge to Darwin’s theory at the time).

 

Of course there is much more. Many other links that take your coffee to the fundamental physics describing our world and our universe. Which ones have you pondered while you have dwelt on your brew?