Add A Little Water To Coffee Beans To Make A Better Brew

Coffee connoisseurs have long held the belief that adding a little water to the beans before grinding them could make a difference.

The process is known as the “Ross droplet” technique.

A new study by researchers at the University of Oregon seems to confirm exactly why, as reported by Jacopo Prisco for CNN. The research explored how the technique, which started as an attempt to address the often messy coffee-making process, also affected flavor.

“When you grind coffee, it goes everywhere,” said study co-author Christopher Hendon, an associate professor of computational materials chemistry at the University of Oregon.

“Dust comes out of the grinder; it’s like a plume that covers everything. But if you add a little water, it seems to not go everywhere. It’s cleaner. That was the primary reason people did it.”

Coffee also lowers the risk of heart problems and early death. The study, published December 6 in the journal Matter, tested this more subtle, harder-to-see potential benefit of adding water to the beans: getting rid of flavor-robbing microclumps.

The mess is caused by static electricity, which is created by friction when the beans are smashed together.

This static charge then makes the particles of ground coffee repel each other — like magnets of the same polarity — sending them off in every direction. Water acts like an insulator, dampening this effect — a process known as the “Ross droplet” technique.

“It was first proposed by some enthusiast on a home barista forum,” Hendon said. “The idea has been around for several years, and originally it was borrowed from the materials production industry, like wood pulping.”

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