MIT's Coffee Masterclass Enters Second Year – CoffeeTalk

This February marks the second year of Professor Jeff Grossman’s “Coffee Matters: Using the Breakerspace to Make the Perfect Cup” class at MIT. The course, which focuses on the science of coffee, teaches students to roast and brew coffee beans, then use the Department of Materials Science and Engineering “Breakerspace” lab to uncover the physics and chemistry hidden within each cup.

Materials science is all about how materials work, why they succeed and fail, and how to engineer better materials. Grossman believes his coffee class is a perfect example of materials science in action, as his students see coffee as a material that can be studied and engineered. He created the Breakerspace lab to bring together students from many disciplines through materials science.

Grossman believes that understanding materials is broader than just the Materials Science department, as they need physics, biology, and chemistry to understand materials and how to make them. He envisions the Breakerspace lab as a place where students from all majors can “get excited about understanding materials.”

The class aims to challenge students to think critically about materials they interact with every day. Ironically, getting the class’s espresso machine was more difficult than getting any of its high-tech lab equipment. The Breakerspace uses a cafe-style La Marzocco espresso machine, which generally sells for upward of $20,000. Initially, MIT’s administration thought it was far too expensive, but when they told them we were going to use it for a class, they were all in.

Grossman begins showing the students how to use the espresso machine by removing one of the machine’s portafilters, which are detachable baskets filled with coffee grounds. He then uses a small device to smooth out the grounds before tamping them, preventing water from over-extracting and under-extracting in the rest. When he’s done, Grossman places the portafilter in a tamper that packs down the ground coffee, finally pressing a button marked with a tiny cup. Out comes espresso!

The brewing process takes about 30 seconds, and Grossman shows a panel on the espresso machine where we can see the growing mass of the espresso shot and how long it’s been brewing. He tells the students that mass within time matters most when making good espresso, as it’s a factor of two within 30 seconds.

In conclusion, Professor Grossman’s “Coffee Matters” class at MIT offers a unique opportunity for students to learn about the science of coffee and the importance of mass within time.

MIT’s Breakerspace lounge is a space where students can learn about existing materials, how they work, and why they fail. The lab uses state-of-the-art equipment such as an electron microscope, an infrared spectrometer, and an X-ray diffractometer to analyze materials and understand their chemical composition. Many of the open labs are called “Makerspaces,” but Grossman wants the Breakerspace to be a place for students to understand existing materials, how they work, and why they go wrong.

The Breakerspace can train inexperienced students to use nearly all of its equipment in around 10 minutes per machine. At the end of “Coffee Matters,” students experiment with their coffee, using microscopes and other equipment to study the science behind the perfect cup. Grossman shows us a row of three machines that use light to analyze materials: X-rays, ultraviolet light, and infrared light.

In Coffee Matters, students learn to make espresso and then use microscopes and other equipment to study the science behind the perfect cup. He uses an optical microscope to compare the quality of two hand-powered coffee grinders: a Comadante C40, a top-of-the-line German hand grinder, and a 1Zpresso hand grinder, a more midrange grinder. The cheaper grinder is covered in chips and scratches, while the more expensive grinder has smooth, shiny blades.

Grossman leads us to the lab’s electron microscope, which shows a black-and-white image filled with blotchy craters — a coffee bean magnified to the molecular level. These craters are filled with chemicals like caffeine before a coffee bean is roasted, and as the coffee roasts, these pockets hollow out, and the chemicals inside them splatter across the edges of each cavity. Then, brewing the coffee flushes these chemicals out and into your cup.

Coffee research at MIT continues a century-old tradition. In the 1920s, during the height of prohibition, people began to turn their attention to coffee as the next thing to get rid of. Coffee companies gave MIT professor Samuel Cate Prescott a large grant to study the science behind how coffee is made and whether caffeine is safe. He was the first MIT scientist to research coffee and began a long tradition of food science at MIT.

Prescott published his final report in 1924, almost exactly a century ago. However, after Prescott’s report, MIT pivoted away from coffee — at least until Grossman came along. Grossman tells students on the first day, “Guys, it’s been 100 years,’” saying it’s time to get back to coffee.

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