DOES BREW TEMPERATURE ACTUALLY MATTER?

Hey!
The testing I did leading up to this video consistently showed greater cups of coffee from 95 and up with lighter coffees (aromatically, balanced, etc). BUT there was always a smidgeon of astrigency. The darker the roast, the more noticeable negative attributes became at higher temperatures.

Try this out and let me know your experience!

Dr. Samo Smrke is the Chemist referenced. He worked on an unpublished study with Simonelli, so I cannot link the article. Everything I said quoting him was from text exchanges we had re: this topic. He is usually readily available on IG, so check out his page:

Here is an article close to this subject matter, as well!
"Brew temperature, at fixed brew strength and extraction, has little impact on the sensory profile of drip brew coffee" by Batali, Ristenpart, and Guinard

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[LanceHedrick]

Have you ever tested the effects of water temperature, all things held constant, in a blind tasting? It is eye-opening! Thanks again to Dr. Samo Smrke for giving me the scoop on the results of the sensory tests he has been a part of with regards to water temperature in espresso. Don't forget to smash that like and subscribe! Cheers

[tommypatton]

I think another interesting experiment would be to dial in the same coffee (via grind size, probably) at 4 different temps, then do a side-by-side of the 4 dialed-in brews (different temps, and presumably different grind sizes) to see which favorite is your favorite.

[AzuritSK]

Hugo is the best cameraman. It took me 11 days to get to this video and I'm glad I did. Lance, I really like you have no problems admitting you were wrong in the past based on new publications, discoveries, experiments.. There's plenty going on in this hobby and way too many people stand blindly behind their ideas refusing to question them. People like you are moving us closer to the better cups. Thank you.

[minusminus]

Respect for this video. It's important to find that middle-ground between research and day-to-day experience. I've lowered my brew temp a bit, to 93, and I'm happy with the results. It feels the most consistent. At 95+ I lost fruit, maybe because I'm sensitive to coffee bitterness. So maybe tuning temp to palettes makes sense.

[HigeYatsu]

I've been playing around with low-temp brews for a long time now, and honestly I RARELY brew above 93C anymore as a result. It's a bit fussy, but when I brew larger batches (35g of coffee) out of my Stagg XF, I actually do my bloom and first pour at 92C, and then cool the water down all the way to ~59C to finish the brew. And then further sacrilege, I do full bypass and add water to the finished brew if it tastes a bit too tight to get better separation of flavors. The resulting cups tend to have more clarity and be a bit more juicy than those brewed wholly at higher temps, and the bypass honestly opens up the cups in an amazing way, it's worth trying if you haven't.

My unscientific hypothesis is that it's not the TDS that you're targeting when it comes to water temp, but rather what compounds comprise that TDS. To me, it seems like higher temps extract different compounds than lower temps, or at least the same compounds at different ratios, so while temperature might not have a huge impact on TDS, it does have a huge impact on the taste of your brews. And once you have the compounds in the cup that you enjoy, stretching your total yield can actually have a very positive effect that doesn't make the coffee taste any less extracted.

Happy experimenting!

[mastersingleton]

I've experimented with coffee brewing temperature and have discovered that the lower the temperature the sweeter the brewed coffee is and for single origin coffee I can taste more of the various unique flavor profiles of each single origin coffee. Plus I also experimented with decanting brewed coffee before serving like with wine and have discovered that the coffee aroma and notes is more pronounced and the flavor of the coffee more distinct and flavorful. I welcome you all to experiment with decanting coffee like with wine prior to serving to see if it improves the taste of your coffee brew.

[rickson]

Hey Lance, as a follow up, I think it would be worth trying this experiment but at a lower brew ratio. If the hypothesis was initially that hotter temperatures dissolve more compounds I would imaging there is a saturation point (think of a logistic curve). It would be interesting to see how extractions change at different ratios assuming each temperature reaches saturation at different points which I guess might impact flavor.

[TomJones-txpb]

Great, fun video to watch.
This is exactly what I have been playing around with every day with espresso for the last 6 months with my wife as the test subject.
Hard to do, but once everything else is standardized, it seems like her comments are:
Low temperature is "Smooth but lacking in tobacco tastes".
High is "Like a coffee shop, tobacco like tastes, some harsh flavor" (like over-extraction).
In the middle is "Complex, full flavored, little to no harsh flavor".
Variables that mess with the results include pre-infusion times, extraction flow rate, and extraction to coffee ratio.
I am still working on this. If I make only one change somewhere, from day to day she picks up on it in her description.
We once went on a wine trip together and she was able to tell in blind tasting what vineyards wines were from. Not your typical coffee drinker.

[TheDustyne]

It‘s good to remind ourselves to always question things. Especially when brewing coffee I also found that given things aren‘t always given and that some experimentations can pay off. Thanks for this ❤

[aaaashleyyyyy]

I always thought about temperature as a way to tweak the charactaristics of which compounds are dissolved but not neccesarily their intensity, like changing the color of a light, but not neccesarily the brightness. Interesting to see the results here. And also, wow that Hugo has got some pretty amazing camera skills.

[stevenkoppelkam]

These intro's are really putting out the vibe lately, and im here for it

[Flyzguy]

Thanks so much for the effort to test these things so that we can all enjoy our coffee journey. As an engineer I find so often the things we can count don't count, and the things that count can be hard to count. Other scenarios of the partial derivative "one thing at a time" approach is when the system shows high sensitivity to a combination of variables but low sensitivity to them changing in isolation. This could be a combo like temp + grind or temp + extraction time. Really fun to think about. Thanks.

[derfetch]

i love the video length of 10-20 minutes.
also you have the best camera man. in general, your video quality is really really good

Thanks, I'm grateful for your approach and putting yourself out there. It must take so much courage to be authentic and honest. I'd be very curious to see a blind taste session of this same settings where you taste with your coffee brother James Hoffmann. For to my knowledge, he's also been in the camp of brewing with boiling water. (He actaully argued that the water cools down quite drastically anyway in whatever brew device you use so the coffee won't meet 100 degrees water anyway.) So yeah, I'd be interested to hear what he'd take home from such an experiment. Or have you two spoken about your findings yet?

[notme]

Hugo is the best cameraman. I’d be curious to see if temp plays a different role with darker roasted coffees.

[jakeg]

Another amazing video. Really killing it lately. Keep up the great work!

That was for Hugo. Lance, you're okay too...

[steffanhegeman]

A compact, insightful video. One simple question revised and presented with great personality. This is some awesome stuff!

[shewhrn]

As a grad student... a tip of the hat to you for humility. It is the foundation of science. Also, I've heard the same things, and now I get to do a ton of experimenting with water temp and my Robot (I love a good experimentation session). Related... perhaps this explains the variability in opinions on whether or not the Robot needs pre-heating. The designer insists it doesn't, yet some folks insist it does. This video allows for the possibility that everyone is correct, depending on the coffee, how it was roasted, and your individual palette. It's also somewhat frustrating because if you're not considering form factor, aesthetics, etc., in other words, if your primary objective is taste, then it makes a showdown between, say, a Robot and a Flair 58 even more a matter of personal taste. I found it quite fascinating that you preferred the Flair 58 without the heater (though the temp uptick at the end is interesting... I wondered about turning it off before pulling the shot to avoid that). I love my Robot, but I'm still Flair 58 curious. Your comments about the Robot vs. the Flair with regard to roast levels (I don't like dark, I usually gravitate toward medium roasts and sometimes light roasts) engaged my confirmation bias on my choice of the Robot... but now I need to make friends with someone who has a Flair 58 so we can do some experimenting (either way, I'm still pretty thrilled with the Robot, I bought it used from a friend and I've used it nearly every day).

[nikivan]

This channel should have a lot more subscribers.

[roberthenrypoet]

So, early in my speciality coffee journey, I kept
my water at boiling temperature reguardless
of which roast levels the beans were. Lol Anyway,
overtime I've learned / preferred to keep my temperature at around 190 F for darks, 195 F for mediums, and boiling point for lights; I think because of the need for extreme heat ( among other things) have made me like light roast less. It can be tricky getting temps right, but the effects are so massive! Thanks for another videos Lance! :)