Very interesting for industrial use, that’s for sure.<p>For domestic use, in the home of somebody whose coffee snobbery is dialled to 11, I need far more information.<p>What beans were they using, freshness, etc?<p>How did they control for extraction method differences to maximise output quality for all brew methods?<p>Did the espresso drinks have milk in them? If not, were the “regular” coffee drinkers regular consumers of espresso?<p>Most importantly, how long until Hoffman does a deep dive and much will it cost so I can allocate budget for yet another coffee making device?
My dad was stationed on a submarine in the navy and he and a few others used to dump their laundry in the ultra-sonic cleaner normally used to clean engine parts. Said it did a great job....
Don't show this to the EU, or they will force us drink only ultrasound espresso from now on.
More likely they will ban it to protect the Italian heritage of the traditional espresso.
Monopoly/duopoly is more a US thing.
hahahahahahahhahahahahahha
This was also discussed on HN a few days ago.[1]<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552440">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552440</a>
What's the cost for the machine though?
After the last one of these posts talking about cold brew coffee I attempted to replicate the results by just throwing some water and coffee into an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner. Results were not satisfactory. I wonder if extracting the transducer from the jewelry cleaner and attaching it to my Portafilter would work.
It'd be a learning experience to find the right settings.<p>Coffee usually goes in two directions. Under-extracted (sour) or over-extracted (bitter). Things that will affect the extraction are temperature (hotter usually means more extraction), time (longer = more), grind size (more surface area in smaller grinds = more), pressure (higher = more) etc. Roast levels also matter.
I tend to wake up before my partner, and I can only imagine the look on her face when the ritualistic grinder noise gets joined by a noisy brewer.<p>In all seriousness, people tend to have a routine around coffee, but I think the Aeropress showed that people will change if the result is meaningfully better.
At a 3 minute shot, I’d rather use the same time to do a pour over
Is power consumption really the issue. Or just more consistent flavor?
I don't know anyone who buys ready-to-drink coffee all that often. It's more of an impulse or convenience buy.<p>Cutting costs does make sense for this type of product, but is it enough to keep up with declining demand?
As I glance at my (checks notes) $200 power bill in San Diego apartment used entirely to run 3 ceiling fans and a box fan, I’m getting curious about all the ways power consumption can be reduced. No AC, LED lights, all gas appliances.<p>I am going to switch over to a bunch of DC tower fans which claim to cut energy usage substantially. I wish more appliances would just switch to DC motors.
You may want to do a basic audit of your electrical usage -- it's not unheard of for apartments to have messed up circuits where one pays for usage by another.<p>If you turn off all of your AC consuming devices is your meter still registering usage?
Look into balcony solar, if you have a balcony with sun exposure.<p>California energy prices are among the highest anywhere, so anything you can do to cut usage will have a bigger payoff there, and justify some investment to achieve it.
How much do you pay for kWh?
I see the value for American-style "espresso-flavored" drinks, or similar bottled/packaged products.<p>But, yuck, who on earth wants to drink actual espresso at room temperature?
In the style of Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue:<p>"You got your cold brew, your Japanese iced coffee, your iced americano. Then there's your mazagran, that's coffee with lemon juice, real refreshing. Your espresso tonic. Your iced latte, iced cappuccino, iced macchiato. You got your iced mocha, your frappuccino, your Greek frappé. Vietnamese iced coffee with the condensed milk dripping down real slow. Affogato, that's espresso poured right over ice cream. That's... that's about it."
The target of this process is not the residential use, but industry processing.<p>Instead of heating water to extract coffee and then latter cooling it to freeze dry and make instant coffee you keep the whole process at low temperatures, saving lots of power.
I do!<p>I think almost everything tastes better at room-ish temperature.<p>(Some things need to be colder or hotter to keep their texture, but I can't think of anything that _tastes_ better outside of the 16~25°C range)
Sparkling water (8-10C is the recommendation on the bottle in my hand).
Bread (fresh from the oven, toast).
Chicken Soup.
And leaving aside examples, many things do taste better when they are hotter then 25, the heat helps more particles reach the olfactory receptors in your nose.
Fine for iced drinks or Americanos. Even drinks with hot milk might be ok. I guess it's not so great at a neat shit of espresso.
Yeah not for me. I like my coffee hot. Scalding hot. McDonald's was great until they had that lawsuit.
"Most of us think of espresso as a hot, high-pressure ritual." - No, most of us dont care how the sausage is made, and just want the end product. Sure theres lots of individual coffee enthusiasts who cares, but in % terms thats not "most of us", most of us do not care, and nobody in my 40 years of life has ever complained about coffee energy usage.<p>Extract with sound waves is an interesting idea, but dont romanticize demand that doesnt exist, it wrecks credibility, literally in the first sentence of the article
This is ambient temperature espresso and savings are likely a big deal for industrial brewing, not home use, quite interesting tech.