re: coffee drink SOLAR.KnowledgePublications.com

re: coffee drink
15 nov 2003
lorenzo rants at ned:

>are you are so anal retentive to think that if it is brewed at 199 
>degrees vs 198 degress, it is not espresso?

it's not black and white, but being outside of a 93 +/- 3 c (199 +/-5 f)
range can make a difference in under- or over-cooking or under- or over-
extracting desirable or undesirable coffee components. rational humings
recognize that the process can affect the chemical composition or taste
of the resulting coffee beverage.

>do you have ocp or some other mental condition that requires you to blindly
>follow arbitrary parameters?

perhaps you are thinking of ocd. pots and kettles come to mind.

>this scaa definition is meaningless as it essentially defines espresso as
>something made with a professional espresso machine, not what espresso is.

we might think of espresso as the result of a certain specifiable process.

>it's like defining bread as something made in a professional bakery,
>excluding home baked bread as that isn't made exactly the same way.

consider french bread. our local warehouse makes something labeled "french
bread" in a non-steam oven. it is so pliable it can be bent in half with no
loss of "crust." real french bread made in a steam-capable oven has a thick
brittle crust that shatters when it is bent in half, and it's fairly dry vs
moist inside. rien a dire.

>where do you get the idea that steam pressure can only generate 3 bars of
>pressure?

mr. flanders may have had exploding boilers or steady-state physics in mind.
at one atmosphere, water boils at 100 c. pv = nrt, altho we might make more
than 3 bars without raising the bulk water temperature much in the short term,
or cool the water on the way out. with a pump, we can vary the pressure and
temperature independently, which is a big advantage in process control. 

nick