Can Steel Ball make Coffee better?

How are you doing, {{first_name | coffee lover}}? Hope you had a nice caffeinated week.

I recently saw an interesting pour-over setup at a cafe. Between the pour-over brewer and the coffee server, there was a holder. I was intrigued.

I asked the barista about it; he told me a cold steel ball goes in that holder while brewing, and it makes the coffee taste better.

The coffee we get isn't cold, but the cold ball is used in the first half of the brewing process to improve its taste.

I had to try it. But was it better?

Before telling you how it tasted or felt, let me talk about the research this interesting brewer sparked.

This brewer is called Paragon from the company named Nucleus coffee tools. They came up with a science technique called "Extract Chilling."

Let me boil down how it works.

Any experience, either food or a drink, involves not just the taste but also the smell or the aroma of that item.

To test this, you can sip coffee with your nose pinched. It doesn't feel the same. Remember when you had a cold and your nose was all stuffed up? You probably noticed how bland the food tasted.

And in coffee, there are a lot of volatile compounds that make up the aroma. If you take a cup of coffee, you can taste different notes at different temperatures because of this.

Coming back to the brewer, the chilling rock plays a crucial role of locking in the volatile aroma compounds while brewing.

First let's look at the brewing process without the chilling rock, and then go to how it makes the taste better.

This technique is primarily a pour-over.

Coffee extracts differently at different temperatures. Especially in a pour-over. When you pour hot water from above onto the coffee, first the acids and fats get extracted. Then the sweetness. By this time, the whole coffee reaches higher temperatures. And now the body and bitterness get extracted. When all of these are balanced well, the cup tastes good.

Now, when the coffee is beginning to extract, we let it drip over the chilling rock and lock in the aroma. This chilling rock is used in the zone when the acids and sweetness are extracted.

This is known to lock in up to 40% more volatiles which otherwise are lost in the air. The aroma that fills the room while making coffee is captured with this.

Back to the question of whether the coffee tasted good – it was a great cup of coffee in general. What I should have done is taste the coffee normally with out this chill ball and then with, to make out the difference.

Let me leave you with a few links where you can learn more about this.

It's fascinating how things in coffee are developed and invented.

That’s all I have. Have a caffeinated weekend.

See you.

Keep on brewing!