Charlotte Malaval isn’t ashamed to admit that four years ago her knowledge of coffee was non-existent. “I’m from France, so naturally I grew up drinking bad, bitter, dark-roasted coffee,” Charlotte says. “I didn’t know what specialty coffee was or what origin is.” Read more
Socratic Coffee on why particle size matters (Part V: signal-to-noise ratio)
At this point in our series, we’d like to introduce a framework we think is very useful when it comes to brewing and tasting coffee. You might have heard the term “signal-to-noise ratio” (often abbreviated to SNR). With a SNR framework, the world can be thought of as containing stimuli we are interested in (signals) mixed with stimuli we are not interested in (noise). SNR is the ratio of signal power to noise power. Read more
Socratic Coffee explains why size matters
There’s one quote from American astrophysicist Carl Sagan we at Socratic Coffee really appreciate: “What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined.” Read more
Socratic Coffee explains why size matters (Part II)
In our last column, we attempted to show how the sizing of coffee particles is not a trivial exercise. Three-dimensional objects with diverse morphologies, geometries, and topographies are not easily quantified in a simple metric. Read more