James, thanks to your channel I already rock up at the office every day with an aeropress, a little scale and a hand grinder. I'm worried that if I start also turning up with a dewar of liquid nitrogen though my colleagues will conclude that I have finally gone insane.
@@Stellar-Cowboy While you are right, I don't believe this video falls under that jurisdiction. (I'm not a lawyer) As far as I know, to constitute being sponsored/advertisement, there needs to be a) payment (not necessarily money), b) oversight by the advertiser, and c) endorsement of a product/service. This video satisfies maybe one of those. So the disclosure here is absolutely voluntary and not required by UK law or youtube guidelines.
This is a perfect example of why I'm a James Hoffman fan. Just at the moment I'm thinking, “James, you have to compare it to both room-temp and domestic-freezer coffee.” he tells us that's exactly what he's going to do. We love you, James, keep up the good work.
Working in a chemistry lab, we use the LN2 (liquid nitrogen) freezing trick quite a lot. I work with microporous polymers which are sometimes quite a pain to grind them for analysis because their grains can be quite rigid, so I just freeze them in LN2 and grind while still cold. After grinding, though, I have to dry them under vacuum because some moisture can be trapped and condensed. My senior once used LN2 to freeze a piece of sponge before cutting. LN2 is one of the most important equipment (if you will) in our lab because besides that, we use it as a coolant in cold traps to set high vacuum system in many applications.
I am also a chemist and was encouraged to use LN2 on cannabis flower from prerolls in my research analyzing consumer cannabis delta8 products. Unfortunately I was at a small institution where we didn’t have access to LN2 but I liked the idea and thought it would be great for all kinds of grinding needs!
@@CatChan141 well that just sounds like you should do the next best thing which would be to tumble the flower in dry ice. It's a method they use for separating the thc crystals from the flower. Typically in order to make concentrates like rosin where it's placed in a micron filter bag and pressed on a heated press.
I don't know why I always watch the great Mr Hoffmans videos at 11pm at night... leading me to get out of bed, drink a coffee I don't need and then lay awake until my alarm goes off remembering every embarrassing thing I have ever said to anybody in my life. Worth it though, won't stop. Keep up the good work! I need a coffee to give me energy to make a coffee....
I'm from Melbourne, Australia, so I've kind of always been a little in to coffee just due to circumstance. But I've recently really gotten in to coffee, and a friend turned me on to your videos. You must be the most transparent dude on the internet and I fucking love it, it's why I keep coming back. That, and the content is amazing.
One huge implication for us home users is that: If frozen coffee beans don't actually brew any worse, then our puny little home grinders would have a lot of its grinding heat taken away by the cold beans. My encore always worries me with how warm the grinds feel coming out, and the burrs could go hard-to-touch hot. Love to see this test run on home grinders with large dose (ie grinding 100g when friends come by )
I can see the extreme cold of liquid nitrogen acting in two different ways: 1. The beans will be more brittle, and prone to shattering. This would result in a finer grind. 2. The grinding will take place at a much lower temperature, since the beans start out much colder. The beans will lose fewer volatiles during the grinding process.
Just to let you know James. Because of you, I now brew French Press coffee and use the word "Delicious" often. Love your channel. Been here since you had about 150,000 subscribers, so glad you have hit the 1 mil mark!
I appreciate the openness on your channel about sponsors/companies you are affiliated with. That being said, Mylk is still the best dang dairy alternative I've tried 😂 Long term customer for sure 👌
I wanted my coffee beans to last longer than just a couple of minutes after opening the bag, so I hired a HazMat team to come by and seal 100 lb of coffee beans in liquid nitrogen. They said I shouldn't go near it for at least 10 to 15 years but by that time they should be ready for roasting. I'm so excited and I can't wait!
Would be interesting to know how much of this is actually a function of temperature and how much of condensation. Stands to reason that the frozen beans would accumulate a lot of water - ala the bean misting technique - which may serve to reduce fine particulate formation.
Glad to see you finally put something out on Cometeer (or maybe I missed prior videos). I've been getting my monthly shipments for a few months now as I was blown away by the depth of flavor when I tried it for the first time a few months back. I had actually been waiting for you to do some sort of review video, but given your coffee appears slated to be included in the mix I assume you agree that it is also a solid product and I understand why you have not done a review video. I'm loving everything that I have gotten from them so far. The only thing that I think I miss from these frozen coffee concentrates is that they seem a bit light on texture, almost like the brew is lacking any of little bit of natural oil that I usually get from a cup of coffee. However, I will gladly give up that quality given the convenience factor and that I can take these with me anywhere to have quality coffee. I'm looking forward to getting some Square Mile coffee from them once it is available (or maybe it will only be on your side of the pond). Does anyone know anyone at Intelligentsia that can recommend that they speak with Cometeer?
Having worked with liquid N2 and done a lot of lyophilization, when you froze the beans, did you wait until the N2 stopped “boiling”. Only then you have frozen the beans completely. Btw, we crushed bio samples using a mortar and pestle and liquid N2 - to extract DNA.
totally dorky & unnecessary scientific grammar thing: 77 Kelvins, technically -- it's the absolute measure of temperature, so there are no degrees (unlike F or C, which is why they are referred to as "degrees Celsius" or "degrees Fahrenheit") when using the absolute measure of temperature. thus there are no such things as "degrees Kelvin," so the only times Kelvin would be used in a singular would be if you're talking about any number from 0 to 1 Kelvin. beyond that, you just add an "s" to make it a plural as we usually do in English. and I know my comment is totally not useful here! also, Cambros can handle a huge variety of temperatures &/or pH. they only advertise as being able to withstand negative 40 degrees F (aka 233.15 Kelvins), but yeah, apparently it can handle something colder than that rating, at least for that period of time. I think you'd have to have a pretty big cambro to crack it with liquid nitrogen -- in a smaller one like the one James used, the liquid nitrogen boils off pretty quickly when exposed to room temp; clearly more quickly than that temperature can break that size of cambro. in a 3-story-high cambro of a proportionate shape, it would take longer. hmmmm.... now I want to test giant cambros with liquid nitrogen. I've gone completely off on an irrelevant tangent, but you know, that's the fun part... kind of!
I’ve been enjoying my Cometeer deliveries and was hoping you’d do a video about them. Guess that’s out of the question if you are working with them. But, YAY! I. Glad you are working with them.
I have no equipment yet and really wanted better coffee at home... I used the coupon and THANK YOU, it's been great. I have a favorite and my hand grinder just arrived so grateful for the tip to buy Cometeer cuz I otherwise would have been too skeptical. Thanks James!
I experimented with keeping my beans in the freezer about a year ago. I did notice it resulted in less static and grinded a bit easier and faster with the cheap handgrinder I used at the time.
I keep my beans in the freezer as well... never had an issue with grinding them as they sit on the counter for a few minutes between being weighed and hitting the grinder.
The issue with grinding from frozen, that I have found, is that the moment it comes out of its container it starts attracting moisture in the air which gums up the works when you try to grind them. Something that probably wasn't too much of an issue with the room James is in that is probably air-conditioned and therefore has low humidity.
Have you tried the following approach: - put coffee beans in a vacuum bag, then vacuum the bag (remove as much air as possible) - freeze beans - at a later time unfreeze beans, let them return to room temperature - only then take them out of the bag and grind them. I haven't tried this with coffee, but it might help avoid the whole condensation issue
this video is a perfect example why I love this channel so much, there's not only something to learn, but also a chance to have a laugh (not just video but also the comments), I've tried to find other channels of a similar quality, but so far not been successful, does anyone have any ideas? Does not have to be about coffee..., the motto could be anything, it's just that James Hoffmann attitude!
I'm a hash maker, we use LN2 to cryomill material, as well as cryo-sift trichomes off the flower. LN2 is handy for sure. Im also a coffee drinker, but never put much effort into it.. James has helped me realize how making coffee can be almost as fun as making hashoil.
Yes indeed I did this, I could not find differences when taste testing (blind test with three coffee lovers) and therefore I keep them in the freezer (under vacuum that is) I keep my beans for longer and waste less 👍🏼 Thanks for the confirmation!
Gotta say, I love watching your videos. Curiously educational. I also enjoy setting the playback speed to 1.5 'cause that's how it really feels on coffee ;)
When you "poached" coffee beans in LN2, how long did you submerge them? One subtle issue with liquid nitro is that it has a very low heat capacity, which means that it takes a surprisingly long time to actually lower things to cryogenic temperatures in it. A good rule of thumb is that if you submerge them until the LN2 stops bubbling or otherwise reacting, the outer surface (at least) of the beans is at temperature.
Would there be a greater difference between frozen and room temperature coffee when using a "cheaper" grinder? If that would be the case, freezing coffee would be a great hack for people with basic coffee equipment to get a more uniform grind! 😉
Another plus to grinding from-frozen for espresso is: automatic Ross Droplet from the condensation! You can lean into this by breathing on the coffee a couple times before grinding. Also, crucially, I dial-in my grind and extraction with frozen coffee. I can have consistent shots from the same roast batch, months apart!
This is so nerdy, overengineered, and totally unnecessary. Exactly the kind of content I love, and why I'm subscribed to this channel. Like button smashed!
Thank you, James. You're scientific approach always brings me such joy! I, being a scientist, look forward to each of your videos with nerdy anticipation, especially when you break out liquid nitrogen.
Great video, James. Kudos for being honest about affiliations! One comment about the process of comparing samples itself is that "one shot" (i.e. grinding the 3 samples only once) gives us very little information about the underlying phenomena. Rather, it gives us insight on those samples only. A good way to increase confidence in your tests is to use a method called bootstrapping. It means grinding a larger amount of coffee for each class -- namely nitrogen, freezer and room-temperature -- and then running multiple (e.g. 100) comparisons with randomly selected samples of each class. Just to clarify a bit more, you would have 3 bins, one for each class, and would stir the grounds in each before collecting a spoonful. After running through the scanner, you should put the grounds back into their bins and stir them before collecting a spoonful once again. Then you would have a better way to test your hypothesis with confidence intervals attached to your results. Hope I could help your scientific process for next videos! Cheers
The problem with this approach is likely timescale; he'd need to maintain the temperature of all three classes throughout the process, to avoid introduction of error from temperature fluctuation or atmospheric effects e.g. humidity. I'd suggest he'd get better results from running a large number of separate small-scale trials, simply from a perspective of minimising methodological complications described above. Also, he's only doing this as a small demonstration (and for publicity); scientific rigour isn't really the goal of the video IMO.
One thing I'd wanna test is running this experiment on different grinders. I have no way of knowing, but my intuition is that cheap grinders,which may have a bit more "give", would probably see more pronounced benefits from freezing than a nice precision grinder would. But I dunno!
As for liquid nitrogen, it can be commonly found at universities, especially research universities. It's a common research tool, and for the departments that have it on hand, makes for great demonstrations for kids of all ages. Physics departments love to e.g. make liquid nitrogen ice cream as a neat little "science" demonstration for kids of all ages.
I want to try this at home, but I’m fiddling with enough things as it is! On the topic of Cometeer I’ve tried it and I’m having a hard time going back from the sheer convenience especially with how good the coffee is. It feels nice to do my old routine, but just popping a puck into a mug or using the office Keurig is just so fast and easy. I love it
Hey James! Big fan from the Philippines, and this comment has 0 relation to the video. I discovered your channel not too long ago. I ordered squaremile’s Yabitu and it arrived today (first of the many orders i am sure). The flavor descriptors are peach, apricot and honeysuckle. So, a few months back i ordered Colombian coffee beans from a local roaster with flavor notes of Pomelo peel, grapefruit and nectarine. I didn’t like it. It tasted and smelled funky. After that i thought all coffees with fruit flavor descriptors taste just like that so i stayed away from them and just consumed those with caramel, chocolate flavor notes. You can say i tried to gamble with Yabitu. I brewed some today using your v60 method and it was beautiful! It was the first time i actually tasted fruity notes in coffee! It smells fantastic, too! It could just be that my mind was influenced by reading the description in the packaging but yeah i agree with peach and apricot! Sorry my coffee tasting language is not that good (yet). Squaremile did a good job with this one i’m glad i gave it a chance! Oh and by the way, i went back to my order history and check the coffee that tasted funky, turns out it was natural processed! Mystery solved, i know now which ones to stay away from 😉 Also, i’m learning a lot from your channel and i enjoy your videos immensely! Thank you for everything that you do. Keep safe!
Wow, this video flew by. I would love to see more liquid nitrogen experiments in the future. I also liked that you were testing someone's scientific findings/conclusions. I'd also like to see you challenge all the myths in the specialty coffee hobby that's not grounded in fact. Countless recipes include steps that just seem to be blindly followed without ever being challenged. Just because someone did it once when winning a competition (or however it found its way into common use) doesn't mean it's necessary!
I wouldn't do that. If you open the bag straight out of the freezer, warm, humid air from your kitchen gets in, and condensation forms on the sides of your bag and your frozen beans. They'll go stale really quickly. I'm pretty sure James did a video about that a couple years back. Freezing coffee is fine, but once removed from the freezer it has to stay out of the freezer to prevent condensation. If you want to buy a kilo of beans what you can do is split it into ziplock bags of however much you're gonna use in a week. Or if you really want to grind from frozen every single time, loads of tiny ziplock bags of however much you need for one brew! :D
Very interesting, as always! One small thought: if you ran the liquid nitrogen sample first through the grinder its very low temperature could have reduced the burrs’ temperature significantly, possibly biasing the results towards a smaller difference between samples.
Thought the same, but since they did not show the grinding of the other two samples I assumed that they did of course start with the warmest beans first…. Him being James Hoffman and all that
I think James taught us that if we froze a week’s supply of coffee, took it out and immediately ground it for a pour over it would taste almost indistinguishable. However the next morning the main bag would grind slightly more coarsely resulting in slightly less extraction. This is in reference to James’s video about whether we should freeze coffee.
amazing work! thanks for sharing. fwiw, my experience matches yours. brewing filter with coffees directly out of the freezer does not worsen cup quality. however, i’ve mostly stopped doing this. i vacuum seal more than a single dose and am concerned that if i were to open the bag before it hit room temperature, i would get condensation resulting in premature fading.
I am "lucky" enough to live in a place where during winter (5-6 months per year !) we sometimes have nights at -30 degrees Celcius. It's "only" minus 15C this week, so will have to wait for another week. But I will soon and surely try to put outside some beans overnight to see what it does when grinding and extracting the next morning.
Very interesting. In my coffee journey, I've always heard 50/50 on arguments regarding freezing (not nitro) your coffee beans. I do tend to only buy enough for a short period of time (3 weeks to a month). However, I have bought as much as 3 months worth of coffee beans at one time (twice). Normal case scenario, I'd only consider freezing my coffee beans if the pay off was a huge reduction in static. That has been my number one bane lately. I live in a relatively year round humid climate and my grinder has a plastic grind catcher (idk the technical term). I've tried tin foil on the outside and in. I've also tried the trick where you run the handle end of a spoon under tap and then stir the beans prior to grinding. The only thing that has really worked (yet still annoying) is to grind the beans, remove the grind catcher and set it aside, prep my coffee cup and Melita, and heat my water. By the time the water is done, I then tap the grind catcher (I really gotta look up that term), and finally pour the grinds into the filter. There's still some static, but not to the point where some grinds are either refusing to come out or some go on the counter rather than into my filter. My normal routine takes about 6 minutes. With the adjustment for static, it takes almost 10 minutes. That's not a terribly long time, but when you're wanting a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, then 10-15 minutes is not really acceptable.
Like the other person (and James) suggested, I say give the water spray a try; It works reasonably well except for some very weird grinders that produce way too much static for some reason
It'd be nice to some info about intermediate states here. In the culinary world, flash freezing fruit can help preserve cell structure, and that can be held at a regular freezer temperature afterwards with seemingly no negative effects. On the other hand, freezing and thawing almost always seems to have a negative effect on whole pieces of meat, or produce. There is the exception of things like beef tartare where, freezing and then cutting while half-thawed helps achieve a different, desired texture. What I'd be interested to see for coffee is 1) is there a difference between beans ground straight after liquid nitrogen freezing vs those frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored in a domestic freezer for some time (i.e. is the difference simply a function of the temperature the beans are ground at or is it a difference of how the beans are frozen?), and 2) is there a difference between room temp, frozen, and then frozen and thawed beans (in other words, does thawing have a negative effect on the grind)?
Liquid nitrogen is surprisingly accessible for just playing with. Obviously it's only for well ventilated or outdoor use, as it can be asphyxiating if it displaces all the oxygen, and there are of course the precautions for working with low temperature substances, but it only cost me $25 for 20 liters in a dewar rental when I made liquid nitrogen ice cream for my birthday. If you're careful with it, it's wonderful stuff to work with, as unlike ice it does not adulterate what you cool with it, and it can freeze things that otherwise we don't think of as freezing (we made gin ice with it, for example, so we had tonic water, gin ice, and lime powder, instead of a traditional G&T at the party)
If I was conducting this experiment I would have changed two parameters. Firstly, heat from the grinder basket, burs, and the following tunnel and cup heat up the coffee and the coffee beans cool down all these grinder components. To keep the temperature constant all the way down to the cup I would have cooled down all the parts to relevant temperatures. Secondly, cold ground coffee would draw moisture from the air that might affect brew time. Using a dehumidifier in the room and collecting the grounds into a sealed cup and giving enough time to reach room temperature before breaking the seal might solve this issue. This is just my way of thinking, James's approach is already quite sufficient. Maybe another visit to Cometeer?
As I'm the only coffee drinker in the house, and drink only about a cup a day, i routinely freeze my beans. When I get a new bag, though, I'll often make a pot before freezing. The lack of difference between that cup and subsequent, frozen bean, cups is why I've continued to do it for better than 50 years now.
I'd love to see how thawing out the frozen beans impacted the result. Maybe it's not how cold they are when ground, but some physical transformation that happens during freezing?
An important note. The "liquid nitrogen" frozen coffee will have a larger amount of water retained because of the condensation of moisture due to the extremely low temperature. Is this going to effect the extraction process?
Possibly. If the water has permeated into the coffee cells you skip (part of) the bloom and extraction has begun before you even brew. But, the water is negligible compared to the water used for the bloom or the main extraction.
I guess it will also be at a lower initial temperature, which would also affect the brewing temp (maybe that's why the brewing was slower? and why the coffee seemed "less extracted"?)
@@HumbertoMassa I really don't believe that. The heat capacity of coffee beans is very small, the temperature difference between liquid nitrogen and room temperature (the brewer, grinder parts, dosing cup, what ever else) is rather large and the friction of grinding the beans probably heats them right up. I think the coffee seemed less extracted due to a comparative lack of fines. (which is interesting actually, colder beans are more brittle and I would expect them to make more fines because of that)
The difference between the three is clear, at lest on the video with how the LN2 is darkest, freezer is in the middle and the room temperature is the least dark one.
You mention espresso being a brew type that might have a bigger drawback of freezing coffee beans. Sounds like an experiment this channel would benefit from. 😊
James, thanks to your channel I already rock up at the office every day with an aeropress, a little scale and a hand grinder. I'm worried that if I start also turning up with a dewar of liquid nitrogen though my colleagues will conclude that I have finally gone insane.
or theyll wonder how you afford daily nitrogen hits
If you really want to make an impression, try hitting a bripe during a staff meeting
People from your office is going to refer you as the weird coffee person
Hmm... you'd also need a (digital) thermometer, if you don't already have one, which is essential to brew a perfect aeropress shot 😀
Nah, you'll be the cool kid that has the liquid nitrogen :) The coffee fixation will be a thing of the past :)
Transparency is why I keep coming back. Trust goes both ways. Thank you, James and team for always being forward with the audience.
(Advertisement jurisdiction obliges youtube content creators to disclose any advertising contracts they have)
Transparency is fine, but it's what you need to do if there's little trust. Trust implies *not* knowing, but being confident in someone anyway.
@@Stellar-Cowboy While you are right, I don't believe this video falls under that jurisdiction. (I'm not a lawyer) As far as I know, to constitute being sponsored/advertisement, there needs to be a) payment (not necessarily money), b) oversight by the advertiser, and c) endorsement of a product/service. This video satisfies maybe one of those. So the disclosure here is absolutely voluntary and not required by UK law or youtube guidelines.
What's the other way? Of the "both".
@@LadyBovine lol I was wondering the same thing
Two big warnings about possible bias, with no perceptible bias in between.
That is one reason I keep coming back, along with your humour and joy.
This is a perfect example of why I'm a James Hoffman fan. Just at the moment I'm thinking, “James, you have to compare it to both room-temp and domestic-freezer coffee.” he tells us that's exactly what he's going to do. We love you, James, keep up the good work.
+1
You my friend need to experience the outside world.
@@leightaft7763 I would but I can't find my way out of this paper bag
Working in a chemistry lab, we use the LN2 (liquid nitrogen) freezing trick quite a lot. I work with microporous polymers which are sometimes quite a pain to grind them for analysis because their grains can be quite rigid, so I just freeze them in LN2 and grind while still cold. After grinding, though, I have to dry them under vacuum because some moisture can be trapped and condensed. My senior once used LN2 to freeze a piece of sponge before cutting. LN2 is one of the most important equipment (if you will) in our lab because besides that, we use it as a coolant in cold traps to set high vacuum system in many applications.
I am also a chemist and was encouraged to use LN2 on cannabis flower from prerolls in my research analyzing consumer cannabis delta8 products. Unfortunately I was at a small institution where we didn’t have access to LN2 but I liked the idea and thought it would be great for all kinds of grinding needs!
@@CatChan141 well that just sounds like you should do the next best thing which would be to tumble the flower in dry ice. It's a method they use for separating the thc crystals from the flower. Typically in order to make concentrates like rosin where it's placed in a micron filter bag and pressed on a heated press.
the transparency you provide on this channel is something to be admired
I don't know why I always watch the great Mr Hoffmans videos at 11pm at night... leading me to get out of bed, drink a coffee I don't need and then lay awake until my alarm goes off remembering every embarrassing thing I have ever said to anybody in my life. Worth it though, won't stop. Keep up the good work! I need a coffee to give me energy to make a coffee....
I just wanted to tell you this is marvelously written and made me laugh. Just awfully relatable. 👍
@@hippieduck agreed.
"and i know i look good" ---> best part of the video
I feel next week will be the first installment of a "best laser particle analyzer for coffee below 20.000£" review series. I'd be intrigued.
The manual one is probably a lot cheaper.
I'm from Melbourne, Australia, so I've kind of always been a little in to coffee just due to circumstance. But I've recently really gotten in to coffee, and a friend turned me on to your videos. You must be the most transparent dude on the internet and I fucking love it, it's why I keep coming back. That, and the content is amazing.
I'm really glad that I can watch the video with subtitle.
One huge implication for us home users is that: If frozen coffee beans don't actually brew any worse, then our puny little home grinders would have a lot of its grinding heat taken away by the cold beans. My encore always worries me with how warm the grinds feel coming out, and the burrs could go hard-to-touch hot. Love to see this test run on home grinders with large dose (ie grinding 100g when friends come by )
I can see the extreme cold of liquid nitrogen acting in two different ways:
1. The beans will be more brittle, and prone to shattering. This would result in a finer grind.
2. The grinding will take place at a much lower temperature, since the beans start out much colder. The beans will lose fewer volatiles during the grinding process.
Just to let you know James. Because of you, I now brew French Press coffee and use the word "Delicious" often.
Love your channel. Been here since you had about 150,000 subscribers, so glad you have hit the 1 mil mark!
The set and production on this episode is really cool. Love the lighting and color balancing. Really cool video
The set is located at Cometeer's hq/production facility as he have previously shot another episode there and disclosed such detail
“So what we’re gonna do..and I know I look good.” Oh James, I love you.
Me, as a scientist who regularly worked with liquid nitrogen: Actually….
I’m new(ish) to your channel. All fun, and I learn a lot. Thanks for all that you do. And thanks for your humour. Really need that these days.
Thank you for the transparency
I appreciate the openness on your channel about sponsors/companies you are affiliated with. That being said, Mylk is still the best dang dairy alternative I've tried 😂 Long term customer for sure 👌
I wanted my coffee beans to last longer than just a couple of minutes after opening the bag, so I hired a HazMat team to come by and seal 100 lb of coffee beans in liquid nitrogen. They said I shouldn't go near it for at least 10 to 15 years but by that time they should be ready for roasting. I'm so excited and I can't wait!
Would be interesting to know how much of this is actually a function of temperature and how much of condensation. Stands to reason that the frozen beans would accumulate a lot of water - ala the bean misting technique - which may serve to reduce fine particulate formation.
I was also wondering about condensation. Doing this experiment in winter vs non-winter might get different results.
"I'm going to test the science by repeating it."
Love it, absolutely the entire point of science! If you can't replicate it, it isn't science.
Yes indeed!
Glad to see you finally put something out on Cometeer (or maybe I missed prior videos).
I've been getting my monthly shipments for a few months now as I was blown away by the depth of flavor when I tried it for the first time a few months back. I had actually been waiting for you to do some sort of review video, but given your coffee appears slated to be included in the mix I assume you agree that it is also a solid product and I understand why you have not done a review video.
I'm loving everything that I have gotten from them so far. The only thing that I think I miss from these frozen coffee concentrates is that they seem a bit light on texture, almost like the brew is lacking any of little bit of natural oil that I usually get from a cup of coffee. However, I will gladly give up that quality given the convenience factor and that I can take these with me anywhere to have quality coffee. I'm looking forward to getting some Square Mile coffee from them once it is available (or maybe it will only be on your side of the pond).
Does anyone know anyone at Intelligentsia that can recommend that they speak with Cometeer?
Having worked with liquid N2 and done a lot of lyophilization, when you froze the beans, did you wait until the N2 stopped “boiling”. Only then you have frozen the beans completely.
Btw, we crushed bio samples using a mortar and pestle and liquid N2 - to extract DNA.
I love it when James answers a question I didn't even know to ask. Specifically - yes, a Cambro CAN survive being at 77 Kelvin.
totally dorky & unnecessary scientific grammar thing: 77 Kelvins, technically -- it's the absolute measure of temperature, so there are no degrees (unlike F or C, which is why they are referred to as "degrees Celsius" or "degrees Fahrenheit") when using the absolute measure of temperature. thus there are no such things as "degrees Kelvin," so the only times Kelvin would be used in a singular would be if you're talking about any number from 0 to 1 Kelvin. beyond that, you just add an "s" to make it a plural as we usually do in English.
and I know my comment is totally not useful here! also, Cambros can handle a huge variety of temperatures &/or pH. they only advertise as being able to withstand negative 40 degrees F (aka 233.15 Kelvins), but yeah, apparently it can handle something colder than that rating, at least for that period of time. I think you'd have to have a pretty big cambro to crack it with liquid nitrogen -- in a smaller one like the one James used, the liquid nitrogen boils off pretty quickly when exposed to room temp; clearly more quickly than that temperature can break that size of cambro. in a 3-story-high cambro of a proportionate shape, it would take longer. hmmmm.... now I want to test giant cambros with liquid nitrogen. I've gone completely off on an irrelevant tangent, but you know, that's the fun part... kind of!
As a coffe lover biologist transitioning into food industry I really needed this video.
I’ve been enjoying my Cometeer deliveries and was hoping you’d do a video about them. Guess that’s out of the question if you are working with them. But, YAY! I. Glad you are working with them.
I have no equipment yet and really wanted better coffee at home... I used the coupon and THANK YOU, it's been great. I have a favorite and my hand grinder just arrived so grateful for the tip to buy Cometeer cuz I otherwise would have been too skeptical. Thanks James!
Wow, super appreciate that you mentioned we should treat this video as an ad! Thank you for building trust with your audience!
Okay, that was very cool. Thank you for being open about your connections. I love your channel.
I experimented with keeping my beans in the freezer about a year ago. I did notice it resulted in less static and grinded a bit easier and faster with the cheap handgrinder I used at the time.
I keep my beans in the freezer as well... never had an issue with grinding them as they sit on the counter for a few minutes between being weighed and hitting the grinder.
That shot of the liquid nitrogen beans going through the grinder was art, so dramatic. Great mad coffee science as always!
The issue with grinding from frozen, that I have found, is that the moment it comes out of its container it starts attracting moisture in the air which gums up the works when you try to grind them. Something that probably wasn't too much of an issue with the room James is in that is probably air-conditioned and therefore has low humidity.
Thats my thought as well.
Do you grind frozen and then brew straight away the frozen ground coffee?
Have you tried the following approach:
- put coffee beans in a vacuum bag, then vacuum the bag (remove as much air as possible)
- freeze beans
- at a later time unfreeze beans, let them return to room temperature
- only then take them out of the bag and grind them.
I haven't tried this with coffee, but it might help avoid the whole condensation issue
Props for the transparency!
this video is a perfect example why I love this channel so much, there's not only something to learn, but also a chance to have a laugh (not just video but also the comments), I've tried to find other channels of a similar quality, but so far not been successful,
does anyone have any ideas?
Does not have to be about coffee..., the motto could be anything, it's just that James Hoffmann attitude!
I'm a hash maker, we use LN2 to cryomill material, as well as cryo-sift trichomes off the flower. LN2 is handy for sure. Im also a coffee drinker, but never put much effort into it.. James has helped me realize how making coffee can be almost as fun as making hashoil.
Yes indeed I did this, I could not find differences when taste testing (blind test with three coffee lovers) and therefore I keep them in the freezer (under vacuum that is) I keep my beans for longer and waste less 👍🏼 Thanks for the confirmation!
Gotta say, I love watching your videos. Curiously educational.
I also enjoy setting the playback speed to 1.5 'cause that's how it really feels on coffee ;)
This brings a whole new meaning to the term cold brew
Such a great New York Times article of this guy., Mr Hoffman. Glad they finally caught up. Such great videos. Always.
I really enjoyed this video and very much appreciate you transparency.
1. No shitty background music
2. Is direct by saying we should treat this video like an ad
3. Cool hair
4. Some coffee knowledge
I love this guy
Finally, a practical tip that is useful for us total newbies to try at home!
I used to work with liquid nitrogen, loved it every time I got to pour out a thermos of it!
That is pure magic :D love the slowmo shots of mist
When you "poached" coffee beans in LN2, how long did you submerge them? One subtle issue with liquid nitro is that it has a very low heat capacity, which means that it takes a surprisingly long time to actually lower things to cryogenic temperatures in it. A good rule of thumb is that if you submerge them until the LN2 stops bubbling or otherwise reacting, the outer surface (at least) of the beans is at temperature.
Would there be a greater difference between frozen and room temperature coffee when using a "cheaper" grinder? If that would be the case, freezing coffee would be a great hack for people with basic coffee equipment to get a more uniform grind! 😉
Love your content, man! Thumbs up as usual. Continue doing your outstanding work, please.
Another plus to grinding from-frozen for espresso is: automatic Ross Droplet from the condensation! You can lean into this by breathing on the coffee a couple times before grinding. Also, crucially, I dial-in my grind and extraction with frozen coffee. I can have consistent shots from the same roast batch, months apart!
This is so nerdy, overengineered, and totally unnecessary. Exactly the kind of content I love, and why I'm subscribed to this channel. Like button smashed!
OMG, it is a Nature paper about coffe. Hendon and coworkers are de dream team
Interesting! I've recently have started freezing coffee for the first time,
and plan on brewing with some next month: Great work Mr. Hoffman. :)
As a coffee enthusiast a researcher and someone who freezes things for a living, this video won youtube today
I honestly can't believe you've become one of my favorite creator's to watch after seeing the video you did with tom scott.
Thank you, James. You're scientific approach always brings me such joy! I, being a scientist, look forward to each of your videos with nerdy anticipation, especially when you break out liquid nitrogen.
Great video, James. Kudos for being honest about affiliations!
One comment about the process of comparing samples itself is that "one shot" (i.e. grinding the 3 samples only once) gives us very little information about the underlying phenomena. Rather, it gives us insight on those samples only.
A good way to increase confidence in your tests is to use a method called bootstrapping. It means grinding a larger amount of coffee for each class -- namely nitrogen, freezer and room-temperature -- and then running multiple (e.g. 100) comparisons with randomly selected samples of each class.
Just to clarify a bit more, you would have 3 bins, one for each class, and would stir the grounds in each before collecting a spoonful. After running through the scanner, you should put the grounds back into their bins and stir them before collecting a spoonful once again. Then you would have a better way to test your hypothesis with confidence intervals attached to your results.
Hope I could help your scientific process for next videos!
Cheers
The problem with this approach is likely timescale; he'd need to maintain the temperature of all three classes throughout the process, to avoid introduction of error from temperature fluctuation or atmospheric effects e.g. humidity. I'd suggest he'd get better results from running a large number of separate small-scale trials, simply from a perspective of minimising methodological complications described above.
Also, he's only doing this as a small demonstration (and for publicity); scientific rigour isn't really the goal of the video IMO.
One thing I'd wanna test is running this experiment on different grinders. I have no way of knowing, but my intuition is that cheap grinders,which may have a bit more "give", would probably see more pronounced benefits from freezing than a nice precision grinder would. But I dunno!
Thanks for the insight. This will save me time and I'm able to keep coffee longer in the freezer and grind straight out of the freezer.
As for liquid nitrogen, it can be commonly found at universities, especially research universities. It's a common research tool, and for the departments that have it on hand, makes for great demonstrations for kids of all ages. Physics departments love to e.g. make liquid nitrogen ice cream as a neat little "science" demonstration for kids of all ages.
Great video. Love commeteer coffee. I've been a subscriber since July of this year and it's a huge difference in balance
01.28 "And I know I look good"
Haha :)
Educational, as always! Gives a whole new meaning to the term "Iced Coffee"...
I want to try this at home, but I’m fiddling with enough things as it is! On the topic of Cometeer I’ve tried it and I’m having a hard time going back from the sheer convenience especially with how good the coffee is. It feels nice to do my old routine, but just popping a puck into a mug or using the office Keurig is just so fast and easy. I love it
Science is based on peer review. So questioning "The Science" is part of science.
Hey James! Big fan from the Philippines, and this comment has 0 relation to the video. I discovered your channel not too long ago. I ordered squaremile’s Yabitu and it arrived today (first of the many orders i am sure). The flavor descriptors are peach, apricot and honeysuckle. So, a few months back i ordered Colombian coffee beans from a local roaster with flavor notes of Pomelo peel, grapefruit and nectarine. I didn’t like it. It tasted and smelled funky. After that i thought all coffees with fruit flavor descriptors taste just like that so i stayed away from them and just consumed those with caramel, chocolate flavor notes. You can say i tried to gamble with Yabitu. I brewed some today using your v60 method and it was beautiful! It was the first time i actually tasted fruity notes in coffee! It smells fantastic, too! It could just be that my mind was influenced by reading the description in the packaging but yeah i agree with peach and apricot! Sorry my coffee tasting language is not that good (yet). Squaremile did a good job with this one i’m glad i gave it a chance! Oh and by the way, i went back to my order history and check the coffee that tasted funky, turns out it was natural processed! Mystery solved, i know now which ones to stay away from 😉
Also, i’m learning a lot from your channel and i enjoy your videos immensely! Thank you for everything that you do. Keep safe!
Wow, this video flew by. I would love to see more liquid nitrogen experiments in the future. I also liked that you were testing someone's scientific findings/conclusions.
I'd also like to see you challenge all the myths in the specialty coffee hobby that's not grounded in fact. Countless recipes include steps that just seem to be blindly followed without ever being challenged. Just because someone did it once when winning a competition (or however it found its way into common use) doesn't mean it's necessary!
That's the kind of ad we all needed, thank you!
This is so good James.
This is the coolest coffee video I’ve ever seen.
The most important part for me is that I can buy a kilo of espresso beans and keep in the freezer and just use the bean directly from there. Nice!
I wouldn't do that. If you open the bag straight out of the freezer, warm, humid air from your kitchen gets in, and condensation forms on the sides of your bag and your frozen beans. They'll go stale really quickly. I'm pretty sure James did a video about that a couple years back. Freezing coffee is fine, but once removed from the freezer it has to stay out of the freezer to prevent condensation. If you want to buy a kilo of beans what you can do is split it into ziplock bags of however much you're gonna use in a week. Or if you really want to grind from frozen every single time, loads of tiny ziplock bags of however much you need for one brew! :D
Legit, I subscribed to cometeer after his last video about them, and it’s fantastic
You have inspired me to go as far as a V60 and a hand grinder. i dont think i will go any deeper into coffee any time soon!
Very interesting, as always!
One small thought: if you ran the liquid nitrogen sample first through the grinder its very low temperature could have reduced the burrs’ temperature significantly, possibly biasing the results towards a smaller difference between samples.
Thought the same, but since they did not show the grinding of the other two samples I assumed that they did of course start with the warmest beans first…. Him being James Hoffman and all that
10 g Coffee in 1000 g Metall Burr Set plus heat from grinding... can't bei that warm Afterwards!
I think James taught us that if we froze a week’s supply of coffee, took it out and immediately ground it for a pour over it would taste almost indistinguishable. However the next morning the main bag would grind slightly more coarsely resulting in slightly less extraction. This is in reference to James’s video about whether we should freeze coffee.
Good info sir because my habit is to keep my beans in my refrigerator. I love my beans cold when i grind it hahaha usually i only use a dripper.
the science videos are my favorite.
amazing work! thanks for sharing.
fwiw, my experience matches yours. brewing filter with coffees directly out of the freezer does not worsen cup quality.
however, i’ve mostly stopped doing this. i vacuum seal more than a single dose and am concerned that if i were to open the bag before it hit room temperature, i would get condensation resulting in premature fading.
I am "lucky" enough to live in a place where during winter (5-6 months per year !) we sometimes have nights at -30 degrees Celcius. It's "only" minus 15C this week, so will have to wait for another week. But I will soon and surely try to put outside some beans overnight to see what it does when grinding and extracting the next morning.
You mentioned wanting to grind finer, so I was anticipating that result. I was saddened to see the video end.
"Treat this video as an ad."
If ads were all like this video I wouldn't skip them..
Admit it. You just wanted to do some slowmo smoky magic shots! They look fabulous ✨🔥
Very interesting. In my coffee journey, I've always heard 50/50 on arguments regarding freezing (not nitro) your coffee beans. I do tend to only buy enough for a short period of time (3 weeks to a month). However, I have bought as much as 3 months worth of coffee beans at one time (twice). Normal case scenario, I'd only consider freezing my coffee beans if the pay off was a huge reduction in static. That has been my number one bane lately. I live in a relatively year round humid climate and my grinder has a plastic grind catcher (idk the technical term). I've tried tin foil on the outside and in. I've also tried the trick where you run the handle end of a spoon under tap and then stir the beans prior to grinding. The only thing that has really worked (yet still annoying) is to grind the beans, remove the grind catcher and set it aside, prep my coffee cup and Melita, and heat my water. By the time the water is done, I then tap the grind catcher (I really gotta look up that term), and finally pour the grinds into the filter. There's still some static, but not to the point where some grinds are either refusing to come out or some go on the counter rather than into my filter. My normal routine takes about 6 minutes. With the adjustment for static, it takes almost 10 minutes. That's not a terribly long time, but when you're wanting a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, then 10-15 minutes is not really acceptable.
Spray water onto the beans before grinding them. That was a game changer for me, maybe works for you.
Invest in a mini-vac and hoover up the dust
@@Thetache I can't believe I hadn't thought of that. There's nothing like losing a gram or two from a carefully tuned in brew recipe.
Like the other person (and James) suggested, I say give the water spray a try; It works reasonably well except for some very weird grinders that produce way too much static for some reason
It'd be nice to some info about intermediate states here. In the culinary world, flash freezing fruit can help preserve cell structure, and that can be held at a regular freezer temperature afterwards with seemingly no negative effects. On the other hand, freezing and thawing almost always seems to have a negative effect on whole pieces of meat, or produce. There is the exception of things like beef tartare where, freezing and then cutting while half-thawed helps achieve a different, desired texture. What I'd be interested to see for coffee is 1) is there a difference between beans ground straight after liquid nitrogen freezing vs those frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored in a domestic freezer for some time (i.e. is the difference simply a function of the temperature the beans are ground at or is it a difference of how the beans are frozen?), and 2) is there a difference between room temp, frozen, and then frozen and thawed beans (in other words, does thawing have a negative effect on the grind)?
Great videos James- thanks for all your thoughtful effort. I would love to see you review a new built-in Miele coffee system
I literally want to watch the video because James is open in saying "yes, this video is totally an ad"
Fun! Thanks! I love liquid nitrogen, always fun when the frozen meat order comes with a bunch of it.
Liquid nitrogen is surprisingly accessible for just playing with. Obviously it's only for well ventilated or outdoor use, as it can be asphyxiating if it displaces all the oxygen, and there are of course the precautions for working with low temperature substances, but it only cost me $25 for 20 liters in a dewar rental when I made liquid nitrogen ice cream for my birthday. If you're careful with it, it's wonderful stuff to work with, as unlike ice it does not adulterate what you cool with it, and it can freeze things that otherwise we don't think of as freezing (we made gin ice with it, for example, so we had tonic water, gin ice, and lime powder, instead of a traditional G&T at the party)
Love a good Mastersizer 3000. Also love to see more nerdy coffee science!
If I was conducting this experiment I would have changed two parameters.
Firstly, heat from the grinder basket, burs, and the following tunnel and cup heat up the coffee and the coffee beans cool down all these grinder components. To keep the temperature constant all the way down to the cup I would have cooled down all the parts to relevant temperatures.
Secondly, cold ground coffee would draw moisture from the air that might affect brew time. Using a dehumidifier in the room and collecting the grounds into a sealed cup and giving enough time to reach room temperature before breaking the seal might solve this issue.
This is just my way of thinking, James's approach is already quite sufficient. Maybe another visit to Cometeer?
As I'm the only coffee drinker in the house, and drink only about a cup a day, i routinely freeze my beans. When I get a new bag, though, I'll often make a pot before freezing. The lack of difference between that cup and subsequent, frozen bean, cups is why I've continued to do it for better than 50 years now.
I'd love to see how thawing out the frozen beans impacted the result. Maybe it's not how cold they are when ground, but some physical transformation that happens during freezing?
Conspiracy theory
James only did this collaboration with Cometeer so he could play with liquid nitrogen and particle analyzers.
Dry ice might work real well and could actually go along with the beans to the grinder
This video should be named "Dialing in coffee grinder using particle analyzer" :D Great work and very interesting results.
James, you have educated about the world of coffee . For that am very thankful
Please review the hard tank technology
What a COOL way to brew coffee
An important note. The "liquid nitrogen" frozen coffee will have a larger amount of water retained because of the condensation of moisture due to the extremely low temperature. Is this going to effect the extraction process?
Possibly. If the water has permeated into the coffee cells you skip (part of) the bloom and extraction has begun before you even brew. But, the water is negligible compared to the water used for the bloom or the main extraction.
Yeah I am not really worried regarding the amount of water. More about the effect of brewing a coffe that got wet during the milling
I guess it will also be at a lower initial temperature, which would also affect the brewing temp (maybe that's why the brewing was slower? and why the coffee seemed "less extracted"?)
@@HumbertoMassa I really don't believe that. The heat capacity of coffee beans is very small, the temperature difference between liquid nitrogen and room temperature (the brewer, grinder parts, dosing cup, what ever else) is rather large and the friction of grinding the beans probably heats them right up. I think the coffee seemed less extracted due to a comparative lack of fines. (which is interesting actually, colder beans are more brittle and I would expect them to make more fines because of that)
Yes, will definitely have picked up some condensation. I was a little concerned for the EK43 burrs
Replication is a super important step in the scientific process - and fun, too!
The difference between the three is clear, at lest on the video with how the LN2 is darkest, freezer is in the middle and the room temperature is the least dark one.
You mention espresso being a brew type that might have a bigger drawback of freezing coffee beans. Sounds like an experiment this channel would benefit from. 😊