Higher Education Advances The Science Of Coffee At UC Davis – CoffeeTalk

The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) has opened a coffee center on its campus in May 2024, which has garnered media and public interest. Despite being one of the U.S.’s predominant agricultural universities, the school has historically focused on locally grown crops like olives and wine grapes. Coffee, however, is not a major crop in Northern California. This is the nation’s first academic center to focus on coffee, making it unique in that regard.

Professor William Ristenpart, a chemical engineer with a passion for coffee, believes that the existence of an institution like the Coffee Center is long overdue. He points out that grapes have been the spotlight for over a century, while coffee is not. Despite more people drinking coffee, it is given less research consideration than local crops.

Ristenpart’s expertise lies in transport phenomena, which are the technical terms for understanding how molecules move around, mass moves around, fluids flow, heat moves, and things get from one place to another. Coffee can be a useful tool for explaining some of the fundamentals of chemical engineering. Since 2013, students have been able to take classes on coffee at UC Davis, starting with the “The Design of Coffee” freshman seminar. The course, which became a general-education course in 2014, has exploded in popularity, with more than 2,000 students taking the class during the entire academic year.

In comparison, UC Davis admits about 6,000 freshmen a year, so roughly one third of the students on campus have taken or will take the coffee lab. The coffee center is a testament to the potential of coffee as a tool for understanding the fundamentals of chemical engineering.

The Coffee Center, originally built for military research, became available in 2016 after eight years of renovation. Funds for the renovation were donated by various coffee concerns and operating expenses come from selling their own “Aggie Blend” roasts to the public. Companies and organizations such as the Coffee Science Foundation also offer funds for research projects.

The center features a large classroom with diagrams and formulas, a sensory lab, and a sensory lab where coffee tasting takes place. Red lighting hides the coffee’s color, making tasters judge it on its flavor rather than color. The Toddy Innovation Lab is dedicated to researching cold-brew and green coffee beans, highlighting the importance of chemistry in transforming unroasted green coffee beans into the richly scented drink they recognize.

The Coffee Center is working on several projects, including a paper titled “A Universal Color Curve for Roasted Coffee,” which is currently in peer review. The center is working with the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) to help them set color standards by having a universal coffee color curve.

At the end of the tour, the center showcases a Caturra plant, a type of Arabica coffee, and raises money by selling its own bean blends in the campus bookstore and online. Ristenpart explains that black coffee can be sweet without adding any sugar, which is considered the Holy Grail of coffee. In 2017, three Japanese exchange students achieved a master brew with an intensely sweet flavor and a rich aftertaste that lingered even an hour after.

The Coffee Center aims to replicate this experience by focusing on the variables that impact the flavor of coffee, such as how it is grown, fermented, stored, shipped, roasted, ground, and brewed. They aim to nail down as many variables as possible and isolate what is impacting the flavor.

The Coffee Center raises money by selling its own bean blends, which are sold in the campus bookstore and online. The center also aims to understand the unique qualities of coffee, such as the ability to be naturally sweet without adding any sugar. By doing so, the Coffee Center hopes to create a more diverse and delicious coffee experience for consumers.

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