University Of Oregon Explores Coffee Chemistry And The Future Of Coffee – CoffeeTalk

Chris “Dr. Coffee” Hendon, a UO scientist and specialist in the chemical optimization of coffee, has been the driving force of coffee science at the University of Oregon since 2020. Hendon, whose mother was a chef, had been interested in food for most of his life, but the artisan coffee shop Colonna and Small’s changed the course of his scientific career forever. Hendon frequented Colonna and Small’s as a patron and eventually caught the eye of one of the founders, Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, who had an interest in chemistry. Hendon spent his weekends teaching him chemistry and learning the ins-and-outs of brewing high-quality coffee.

The pair’s endeavor to brew shots of espresso would leave its mark on coffee history, with their work in chemistry providing the foundation for their partnership. They started working on water chemistry together, which led to two fifth place finishes in the World Barista Championship in 2014 and 2015. The wins validated the application of chemistry in the field of coffee and provided Hendon recognition within the coffee community. He published “Water for Coffee” (2015), a guide to water chemistry and its relation to coffee, and the globally recognized paper, “The effect of bean origin and temperature on grinding roasted coffee.” The globally recognized study concluded that keeping coffee beans cold prior to grinding allowed baristas to extract more coffee from the beans while speeding up extraction, reducing waste, and improving the standard of quality across the board.

Hendon’s work affected cafes globally, with a barista implementing his 2016 study at a conference in Sendai, Japan. His research continued through post-doctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and eventually at UO. It wasn’t until 2020 when the breakthrough study “Systematically Improving Espresso: Insights from Mathematical Modeling and Experiment” was published, finding a coarse grind size was optimal for preventing waste and providing homogeneity from shot to shot, saving millions of dollars yearly in cafes across the world.

For the past four years, Dr. David Hendon and his team have been studying electrochemistry, a study of chemical processes involved with electron movement, and its role in coffee. They have published a study in January 2024 that explained that a spritz of water on coffee after grinding will provide a better tasting brew since it removes static electricity buildup on the ground coffee. A recent study has sought to understand how electricity affects the flavor profile of a cup of coffee by measuring how strong the cup is and how dark it is.

The measurement of a coffee’s roast profile is a widely contested topic among the coffee community. The only way to be completely objective is by obtaining a temperature curve for the roast, which Hendon pointed out is to ask a chef the temperature at which they cook the steak. This would push the boundaries of coffee science forward in a major way.

Hendon is globally recognized in the coffee industry but admits that funding and student interest are the biggest factors of the lab’s research direction. Half the group’s funding comes from coffee research, so they will continue to do it for now. While some sectors of scientific research have been steeped in uncertainty due to the rise of AI technologies and the threat to NIH lab funding, Hendon believes that coffee science is thriving and that the AI-induced dream of a standardized flavor metric doesn’t have ground to stand on.

In the Coffee Lab, all scientists, like the judges in professional barista competitions, are calibrated. While actually “liking” a brew is subjective, all testers can attest they taste the same flavor notes in the sample. Hendon enjoys working with coffee, but the food is just a medium through which to cultivate a deeper understanding of chemical phenomena.

At the current stage of his career, Hendon is in a position to give back to the next generation of scientists by providing a staging ground for student ideas to grow. Hendon also co-hosts the podcast “Coffee Literature Review,” which dissects recent highly caffeinated studies.

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