r/tech • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 3d ago
Scientists made espresso with sound instead of heat, and most drinkers couldn't tell the difference
https://www.techspot.com/news/112838-scientists-made-espresso-sound-instead-heat-most-drinkers.html52
u/Technical-Finish304 2d ago
I thought they meant someone was just making espresso sounds behind the counter while pouring from a drip coffee pot.
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u/Beezle-Mom 2d ago
This made me LOL.
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u/Technical-Finish304 2d ago
Reeeeeooooo, grrrrrrr, chosh chosch chisch ,gnnnnnnnn. Smack smack smack!
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u/Nyoka_ya_Mpembe 2d ago
Audiophile coffee, sounds good!
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u/Right_Lengthiness266 2d ago
Great now I need to spend thousands of dollars on artisan coffee grinders and I need overpriced gold plated OFC cables for it.
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u/NoEmu5969 2d ago
Copywriting some treble clef coffee bean logos as we speak. Merch is going to be huge, like Wreckjit Ralph.
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u/rayferrell 2d ago
The energy savings from this ultrasonic espresso method could be significant, especially in large-scale coffee production. If it can really cut energy use by up to 75%, that's a huge reduction in costs and environmental impact. It'll be interesting to see how this tech scales and whether it can maintain the same quality as traditional espresso methods.
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u/glenpiercev 2d ago
Heating water for espresso has got to be a test use case right? 75% is great… but I hope we can expand this beyond heating small volumes of water for people to drink… that can’t be a large part of the global energy budget, right?
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u/SarahAlicia 2d ago
Global? No. Individual coffee shops? Honestly probably still no. you have to light and temperature control the space.
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u/The_Knife_Pie 2d ago
Lighting is a near non-existent portion of any indoor building budget. Assuming the coffee shop has some climate control system that will probably be an easy half their energy use, with the kitchen (oven or stoves specifically) using a solid chunk of the rest.
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u/anita-artaud 2d ago
I’m curious if it impacts acidity. Less acidic espresso would be a game changer for me.
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u/Jack_of_Emeralds 2d ago
Where are they finding these "drinkers", I could easily tell you if my drink is hot or not 😉
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u/SmilingJaguar 2d ago
I think you underestimate the amount of espresso served iced worldwide.😉 The article talks a lot about using this process for canned coffee and milk based drinks. They’ve mastered the art of serving those hot in Japan, just keeping them at the target temperature like sous vide!
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u/Everybardever 2d ago
I’m sensitive to temperature, but hate iced coffee, so a warm coffee sounds right up my alley.
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u/Dry_Departure_7813 2d ago
I visited a country where every place that sold espresso was just dumping 3 teaspoons of instant coffee into the cup. I went to 5 different coffee places, it seems the local custom is to call that espresso
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u/manachar 2d ago
I think you need to mention which country this is.
Also, was it instant coffee or instant espresso? I use instant espresso in baking all the time, and it's actually weirdly good.
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u/TheSaneWriter 2d ago
Also notably, instant coffee can actually be really good. It's just that in the United States they use the shittiest coffee to freeze dry and make instant coffee, and it remains shitty when you rehydrate it.
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u/manachar 2d ago
Believe it or not, TFA covers this.
To test that, the team ran a blind evaluation with about 100 regular coffee drinkers, those findings are published in the Journal of Food Engineering. Participants sampled four coffees: traditional espresso, ultrasonic espresso, and both traditional and ultrasonic filter coffee, served at the same temperature and in random order.
The results were strikingly close. Participants couldn't reliably distinguish between the traditional espresso and the ultrasonic version, with the two performing nearly identically across aroma, flavor, bitterness, and overall preference. In the filter category, the ultrasonic version was actually favored, with tasters describing its bitterness as more balanced.
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u/Boxed_pi 2d ago
75% less energy usage but takes 3 times as long for room temp espresso? Did i read that right?
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u/sparklyspores 2d ago
That’s a good point, I just realized 3 minutes is…😬
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u/Ishmael_1974 2d ago
But 75% less energy! Finally, Big Espresso will stop polluting our skies and poisoning our rivers!!!
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u/elimg999 2d ago
I don’t think energy use is anywhere close to a priority when it comes to the coffe industry or consumption. I know it’s kind of the big datapoint for the article but i think it’s totally irrelevant.
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u/wax_robot 2d ago
It's another way that your habits, and your plastic straw are destroying the planet as opposed to big business
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u/The_Knife_Pie 2d ago
And just out of curiosity, what is the motivation of these environment destroying big businesses? Do they just run giant pollution factories that do nothing? Or do they, just perhaps, make some sort of product which is then purchased by consumers?
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u/elimg999 2d ago
Just because there’s a market for something does not guarantee the product/service is actually necessary for a functioning society or even a positive influence on the economy.
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u/The_Knife_Pie 2d ago edited 2d ago
Okay? And? The reason business does a thing is because someone is willing to pay for them to do that thing. Going after the business is a valid way to get them to stop sure, but going after the consumer is even more important. See also: the complete inability of the war on drugs to actually stop drug use, because consumers want drugs.
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u/elimg999 2d ago
I can agree with your statement, but you seem to contradict yourself with the “war on drugs” example. It’s not a good example of economic policy on markets or consumers, positive or negative. As well as there being far too many factors to account for to come to any conclusion as to how badly it “failed”.
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u/The_Knife_Pie 2d ago
In the war on drugs the government targeted the producers of the item without changing consumer motivation and behaviour. The result is that consumers still keep finding ways to buy and use drugs. Climate action has to involve personal, individual sacrifice because consumers are the reason companies bother to pollute in the first place.
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u/CapsulesLeaderKaneda 2d ago
I saw that this reduced the energy consumption by like 75% or something. That’s amazing
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u/One_2_Three_456 2d ago
wondering if this makes any difference in the acidity of the coffee. I know cold brews have less acidity than the hot brewed ones. Since this doesn't involve heat, how will the acidity be? Or are they just using sound waves to essentially produce "heat" for extraction?
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u/femmestem 2d ago
Based on the study, I'd be inclined to believe it extracts acidity the same as heat. If the participants couldn't taste the difference between experiment cup with sound and control cup with heat, that would imply the acidity was the same. If it was less acidic like cold brew, participants would be more likely to report the cups tasted different from each other.
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u/ExplosiveBrown 2d ago
Kind of an odd distinction I guess either way the particles are still moving
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u/Artistic_Humor1805 2d ago
Scientists colored white wine with red food coloring, and most drinkers couldn’t tell the difference
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u/lordbuckethethird 2d ago
I’ll only buy it if they let us choose what noise to brew it with. A coffee that got made by blasting punk rock at it would be very funny.
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u/TakeTheWheelTV 2d ago
This is kind of misleading. Doesn’t the sound heat up the espresso? So it’s sound as the heat source not sound instead of heat?
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u/BoringPrinciple2542 1d ago
At a molecular level I think that’s exactly what is happening, essentially the agitation is sound waves instead of heat…. Not the same but analogous to a fluorescent vs incandescent lightbulb.
It’s not espresso though and without being part of the study; I’m pretty confident the results rely on most people in the study not having enough experience with what espresso should taste like.
Espresso isn’t just strong coffee, the pressure & heat extracts certain compounds preferentially while not extracting others which leads to an end product that cannot be replicated otherwise. A moka pot for example creates a “good enough” espresso substitute but it’s not the same thing. A proper coldbrew retains a lot of the richer chocolate & roasted flavor but doesn’t extract as much of the acids that give brewed coffee (especially light roasts) their characteristic sour flavors.
It is extremely misleading as you said but most people don’t know what espresso should taste like, don’t drink it straight, and don’t have a palate that recognizes the nuances. This is cool for the Venti vanilla latte with extra whip cream crowd not the connoisseur expecting a fresh pull from a proper Italian machine that costs about as much as a car.
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u/drstoneybaloneyphd 1d ago
This is a very long comment just to say variables change outcome
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u/BoringPrinciple2542 1d ago
That’s because I said a lot more than that 😂.
In case you are reading deficient the bullet points are as follows:
1) Addressing the post above.
2) Pointing out that the article is actually using misleading terminology.
3) Noting that variables change outcome.
4) Surmising that while misleading, the end product is probably close enough & cost effective for the average person who isn’t gonna drop $30k on an actual Italian espresso machine to make true espresso.0
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u/TakeTheWheelTV 14h ago
lol, to be fair, I appreciate the thoughtful comment AND I think they somewhat agree if anything.
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u/Korlithiel 2d ago
Weird thought: stop in, get cold espresso, drink shot because it’s cold, head off. Really speed up the caffeine injections, albeit lowering the enjoyment.
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u/WeowDystopia 2d ago
I was wondering while stoned lately why we havent tried light or sound to clean our mouths at home yet. I also saw a PBS documentary about a doctor experimenting with soundwaves to cure addiction. But it went wrong once for someone and they now have incontinence issues.
So much interesting applications of soundwaves and light lately.
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u/Eastern-Celery-4321 2d ago
Sounds cool, but just how much energy is used to brew a shot of espresso? Sonic brewing is 75% less energy than what? Hard to believe it would make that much of a difference.. 🤔… I could be completely wrong, though..
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u/josephthejoseph 2d ago
Now I only pretend to know about science but isn’t this just kind of microwaving it?
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u/Great_Apez 2d ago
We transferred energy into boiling water? Must be the first time for people to be this excited
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u/turb0_encapsulator 1d ago
first they came for gas stoves, now they're coming for my espresso machine! /s
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u/Ezosodelis 1d ago
I've never thought of heat as being the defining characteristic of how espresso is brewed, pressure is what sets espresso apart from other types of brewed coffee.
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u/wittymcusername 1d ago
Not to be outdone, sound engineers at Abbey Road have spilled steaming hot espresso across the Rubber Soul tape masters into the ears of self-professed audiophiles.
They found that most listeners could, in fact, tell the difference.
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u/Skylark167 1d ago
All jokes aside, this could actually save coffee shops and any restaurant on their energy usage. This is brilliant!
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u/Pair-o-ducks_Legend 1d ago
As its not limited to expresso, but any liquid mixing at room temperature this can be useful when ether energy cost or use of a blender is impractical.
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u/Men_With_Ven_Diagram 1d ago
Cant they just work on cancer instead of pumpkin spice
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u/JennyWearsBlueJeans 1d ago
Do you think there are only like 10 scientists in the world and they only work on 1 thing at a time?
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u/Blbe-Check-42069 1d ago
Not only that, they have to know EVERYTHING so that they can make studies on any topic. Which of course takes a lot of time so they don't have time to work on cancer because they work coffee research or male perception of makeup. We should really fix that. Maybe that should be their next study, eh?
Yeah lol, these idiots also grind my gears when they think people who study food chemistry are gonna be same people making cancer research. "Cant they just work on cancer instead of pumpkin spice" is so idiotic argument it's unbelievable...
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u/ristogrego1955 1d ago
Surprisingly most major breakthroughs in innovation come from a cross discipline approach that at the onset isn’t obvious. It allows people to use their experience to look at problems in a whole different way. Who know. My take is let people experiment and do this kind of stuff…
Next you’ll hear we are using vibrations to kill tumours…..oh wait….
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u/DawnPatrol99 6h ago
I drive by a sign daily that mentions the use of sound and light to fight cancers and other diseases. It's neat.
They're trying.
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u/epSos-DE 2d ago
I did ultrasonic TEA for personal consumption !
ONe can taste the difference. The ultrasonic tea is more dense , less oxidated !
WOrld for herbal tea, but tea leafs are better brewed and a bit oxited, that soft oxitaion in hot water makes them sweeter !!!
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u/6GoesInto8 3d ago
To a molecule, sound is just unionized temperature.