Will and Beyond - Posts tagged coffee

06/11/09 @ 7:59PM EST
posted by will

It's been a while since I've posted, partially because I was in Mexico for a week, (didn't get swine flu!) and partially laziness. Couldn't really think up an idea for a post here, so why not ramble on (not be confused with ranting) about one of my true loves, coffee.

beans If you're not already familiar with Lifehacker, it's a great site, and they have a lot of DIY stuff, including some stuff on coffee. As I've read the site, I've developed a list of coffee to-do's: DIY Espresso, adding herbal tea to coffee, cold-brewed ice coffee, and roasting my own beans. In fact, this is now my summer to-do list. Expect individual posts as each of these are completed. Feel free to chastise me for being flaky and unforgetful if I don't.

[Comments: 7][Tags: coffee, science, journals]

Caribou Coffee Blows

08/30/08 @ 12:00PM EST
posted by will

I was in lab late on Wednesday night, and along with my Hawaiian Chicken sandwich and Nutty Bars from Vital Vittles, I picked up a can of Iced Regular Coffee, made by Caribou Coffee. I wanted to link to the product page, but I couldn't find it on their site.

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Note that the can says, a splash of milk. Milk drink with a splash of coffee would be a more accurate description. I don't drink my coffee black or anything, I do use milk, but still this was too much.

The milk wasn't the only problem, the coffee itself sucked. Let's take a look at the ingredients:

Coffee: Vague, but okay.
Reduced Fat Milk: I prefer whole milk or half and half myself, but this works.
Sugar: Glad to hear they used real sugar.
Sodium Bicarbonate: Hmm. I found a few patents involving coffee and sodium bicarbonate, but this one says: "It has been common in the past to add sodium bicarbonate to milk-added coffee beverages in order to prevent milk coagulation. Sodium bicarbonate is used because it is colorless and odorless, and has little effect on flavor." Okay, good enough for me.
Natural Flavors: I hate this, this does not count as an ingredient unless you tell me what it is.
Carrageenan: Perfectly normal sounding What the hell is this? Let's go into this some more.

Wikipedia tells us: "Carrageenans or carrageenins are a family of linear sulphated polysaccharides extracted from red seaweeds." Continuing on, "Carrageenan has also been used to thicken skim milk, in an attempt to emulate the consistency of whole milk. This usage did not become popular. It's used in some brands of soy milk." Ah ha!

Wait, Wikipedia also tells us (with no cited references, however) that it's also used as a sexual lubricant and microbicide, "Laboratory studies suggest that carrageenans might function as topical microbicides, blocking sexually transmitted viruses such as HPV and herpes, though not HIV."

And there's more, according to a 2006 study published in the American Journal of Physiology, "exposure of human intestinal epithelial cells to carrageenan triggers a distinct inflammatory pathway".

Summary:
Not only does the coffee have too much milk, and taste like crap, it might invoke an immunological response in my GI tract. Oh, but on the plus side, if I'm out of anti-STD lube, I can dip my junk into the coffee. Worst purchase ever.

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0][Tags: coffee, food, ranting, science]

Chemistry classifies coffee

05/15/08 @ 11:47AM EST
posted by will

Lindinger's group at the Nestle Research Center in Switzerland published a study back in March 2008 in Analytical Chemistry about analyzing coffee with mass spec. I read about this on Engadget then promptly forgot about it. I even gave a presentation on it for my Analytical class, only later to see this in my RSS bookmarks.

Basically by using PTR-MS (proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry) they did an analysis of different coffees. They emphasized that this was a data-driven study, not a chemical analysis study, because they weren't necessarily analyzing the different compounds individually. Rather, what they were doing was taking the results of the mass spec, then combining them with the 'results' of a 10-member panel of coffee experts to create a model. So they just took the intensities of the different peaks (all the compounds that had 108 m/z, 110 m/z, etc.) and compared them to the 'intensities' of the panel ratings. A rough scheme is shown below.

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