Ultrasonic Rapid Barrel-Aging Coffee - Weird Coffee Science 

Just a quick note to fix an error: While the Sonic Dutch kicked off this whole video, it isn't actually an ultrasonic brewer itself. It seems like a subsonic brewer, to get those kind of waves in the brew. Apologies!

Chemist here: There are some unique things going on in sonication. 1) You degas whatever your solvent is, IE removing air from water. Not sure how relevant here 2) You will break up / destroy small particles. Sonication is often used to dissolve insolube components. 3) you can homogenise oil/water mixes. It may be you are extracting more of the "non-water" soluble components. Would be interesting to see what these brews look like left overnight. End of video edit: Brew a 200ML batch, then sonicate to see if cloudiness occurs to test the above.

"dress up like an adult and pretend to know what I'm doing" isn't that just life though?

My hospital colleagues aren't going to be happy when they find out why the ultrasound probe is warm and smells of yirgacheffe, and also broken.

the only thing that went ultrasonic in this video was James' slurping.

I feel like James has some of the best intros not only in the coffee space, but on the platform in general. Well done.

"Sorry for the slurps" - Moments before slurping the sound of a thousand baby birds screaming for food.

James, I’d honestly love to see Weird Coffee Science as a Netflix show!

“Ultrasonic barrel ageing” aka scream into a barrel of your favourite coffee

the ultrasonic probably forced the oils into an emulsion along with any fines into a suspension. It sorta makes sense that it wouldnt pass through the filters easily, think trying to pass mayonnaise through a filter.

Up next, James shoots a cup of coffee into an orbit. Makes careful observation how 3g launch and time in 0g affected brewing. Ends asking community, "have you shoot your coffee into an orbit? How does it taste? Let me know in the comments."

Time to get the centrifuge out to clarify that ultrasonic brewed coffee possibly one of the nerdiest sentences ever said

You're dangerously tempting me to use our lab equipment to brew weird coffees

"I'm not gonna talk about coldbrew today" Me: *screams ultrasonically at my screen*

The intro is so flipping good

You weren't kidding when you said this was gonna be a weird one

This channel takes coffee to places I never would have thought it would go, and I love it.

that sound at 5:13 tho

12:13 james: “and that’s okay”. me while listening to it “and that’s oakay”

That intro was frickin' dope!

I would love to see more of this.

Yeah, James, weird enough!! The weird science was subtle enough to not take away from it the classic JH Coffee love. What fun! Always fun to be watching the weird science series :D

Thoroughly entertaining AND it sparks my curiosity about the flavour. I can actually see this as a thing in a bespoke café.

I use an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner for motorcycle carbs, rifle action, anything you can fill with water. If I recall correctly, The ultrasonic waves are matched in frequency to the 1 atmosphere pressure and activity required to break water into droplets and then they recombine as the wave passes. This break and cavitation causes a cleaning/breaking action.

"Everyone says this is supposed to be for cold brew, so I'm going to work as hard as possible to do everything EXCEPT cold brew".

Getting more and more Socratic Coffee madness by the upload, Jim. Honestly, though, absolutely fascinating stuff! I'm glad we have so many cool experimental approaches to coffee from so many different people tinkering about in the industry.

I have been really enjoying your posts. I do not have lots of $ but am currently saving for a Bonavita brewer(Sage too much money) I, sadly, use a Black and Decker. However after watching your, and others, videos I have been able to brew better coffee with it. Pulled my blade grinder back out, keep the old B&D clean and descaled. I also weigh everything and "bloom" the grounds. I get correct temps (long probe instant read thermometer) by boiling half/750 mls of the h2o in my tea kettle, wait 30sec and pour some over grnd coffee and the rest in the tank... consistent 198-203F(was 185). When done into a prewarmed thermo carafe it goes. HUGE difference! I guess my point is no matter what junk equipment you are stuck with you can always improve your coffee game🤪 Oh, I also have a Moka-pot, a Cezve and a French press...yep a geek I am. I have well water--7.4ph slightly hard water, no big spikes in any minerals, tastes and smells good--lucky.

and here I thought no one cared about the movie, Sneakers... This was weird in a good way, the right way, and now I have an unusual request for when I go in with the gf to get the family jewels polished, he always appreciates those kinds of things.

To get an accuarte reading with the refractometer, you might wanna centrifuge that cloudy solution.

Ultrasonic waves, depending on the intensity, can cause cavitation. That's what generating the ultrafine particles. It has also been shown that ultrasonic waves will improve mass transfer. The pressure waves generate a form of stirring. There needs to be some talk about the intensity and whether cavitation ocurred. Given the hot water temperature cavitation is more likely to occur regardless of the intensity, and the fines really conclusively point to it. On a cold brew, with low intensity ultrasoud, you could improve mass transfer without cavitation occuring. That would be someting completely different of what James Hoffman showed here, and these results cannot be extrapolated to cold brew as easily.

“I dress up like a grown up and pretend to know what I’m doing.” Every day, James. Every. Damn. Day.

Excellent episode, though surprised no one noticed the misspelling of “Barrel” in the intro 😅

See this on Thought Emporium James? Edit: hehe yesss. Soon he'll be genetically modifying himself to sweat coffee.

The most interesting thing ive done with barrel aging is throwing in green beans into a freshly emptied whiskey barrel closing it back up. Rotating the barrel daily for 6 weeks and then roasting the beans. The intense alcohol aroma made it hard to determine when to drop. But it was one of the most delicious I've ever made

James: Sorry for the slurps. James's mouth: demon noises

You can filter the coffee using syring filter, which removes particles larger than 0.3 micrometers... that should make it clear and you get a better reading.

Ngl, Ultrasonic Rapid Barrel-Aging Coffee sounds like a good title for an EDM song.

Please create a playlist on spotify and let us know. Awesome choices

Brew a chemex with the whole thing dunked in a giant one of these, to see how it effects draw-down and extraction. Hook an ultrasonic exciter directly to the group-head of an espresso machine... that's all I can think of for now.

I would love to see this man wearing a hoodie

James, I have to say you have introduced me to one of the nicest hobbies I have picked up in at least a decade. I sleep less and I spend tons of money on weird toys and I watch hours on end how you're experimenting with roasted beans, but it's given me such a great joy and I'd like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being one of the calmest, nicest people on youtube. I wish you would do voice overs or read books on audible. That calm voice of yours is very pleasant :-D Thanks!

Weird enough! But always open to weirder!

Man, that intro was really COOL! Great job!

This man's editing and comedic timing is orders of magnitude greater than actual comedy youtubers/comedians

I love cold brew coffee. now I taste coffee without sugar as per the norm but I always feel like my coffee needs a spoonful of sugar. with coldbrew you get all the sweet light notes without any of the bitterness. I also watched a video on barrel aging and rapid ageing. what they did was add woodchips and they put the alcohol in a vacume and they said they got a full aged dring in hours.

that edit at the start was awesome

Keep doing these type of topics,it’s great.

I make coldbrew and aged for 6 month, and then add a very young coconut water and a little bit of greensands soda... man, my friends was happy ❤

This was just the right amount of weird.

Just an idea. The cloudy coffee is a challenge to measure with the refractometer as you said. I suggest to centrifugaste the cloudy ultrasonic coffee and measure the strength in the clear portion of the centrifugate. Let us know what you find. For the test to be more meaningful perhaps you should also measure the other coffee after centrifugation. This way comparing to identically processed samples.

This was a great video! Definitely weird. Keep em up!

1. Put coffee beans in a vacuum bag, let them sit in the ultrasonic bath and then ground and make coffee out of them! 2. French press this time using kruve sifter also 3. V60 + full coffee beans instead of oak chips

Theory .. Ultrasonic emulsification condenses "time" so this would be potentially like steeping (brewing) your coffee for an hour or longer. Example if I want to accelerate eJuice steeping from a week or two into hours I use a heated ultrasonic cleaner @ 130° F (54° C) for 2 to 6 hours. Ultrasonic emulsification and nano-emulsification is used as homogenizer in a lot of product production for good and bad results. In the case of coffee I'd need to see the effect of separation of heavy metals or other less desirable tasting materials being suspended that otherwise wouldn't be separated from the beans in larger quantities.

I love these "science" videos

Hi James. I actually have been doing a tonne of experimentation based on that video you were likely sent (if it featured nilered in it towards the end, and they do milk experiments, that's the one). Most of mine is around milk and alcohol infusions though, so it's great to see this about coffee Interesting that they are talking about using it for cold brew - the cavitation caused by ultrasonics does cause significant heat production.

In this rubric of weird ones have not seen you address the overboiling method of Cowboy Coffee ,love to hear your insight on subject .

The carbon on the inside of of a whiskey barrel won't be "activated". That refers to a specific process that increases the amount of small pores in the carbon, increasing the surface area, and there therefore the amount of "stuff" it can absorb (or, technically, adsorb). It will definitely still have the effect you're describing, just not as pronounced as a filter full of activated carbon would.

Please name the RU-vid channel that used the wood chips on other stuff you mentioned, you even used a clip from their video. I liked this video, and I saw the video you mentioned, if you're going to use their footage I think it's fair to credit them.

Pleaseee make a video on cold brew coffee. Ratios, methods and every detail please.

That, on your left shoulder, is a Thai language version of your book!

Just saw the Thai character in the book behind "สมุดแผนที่โลกของกาแฟ", quite interesting. Greeting from Thai fan :)

I've been using my ultrasonic bath incorrectly all this time for cleaning bicycle parts.

Also, isn't this what the Elixir Specialty Coffee drinks that you reviewed were claiming to do?

Yesterday I was thinking exactly about this, what would be the effect of an ultrasonic brew, thanks for doing a couple of tests.

Tried this also already, you can't filter ultrasonic brew, unless you want your coffee done in about half an hour for one cup. I just put my coffe in a teabag when brewing with ultrasonic which helps a lot. Also what I'm going to try next is doing this with mircrowaved whole beans. Will keep you updated on my findings, probably next time you drop a video/1week

Saturday morning drinking coffee while watching James dressed as a scientist doing Weird Coffee Science. Is there a better way to start your weekend

Weird coffee person + Labcoat = instant coffee science

I need to start using my ultrasonic cleaner for chili and garlic oil

I’m not sure if anyone else asked this question but would it be easier to get a better balance of flavor by changing the brew method for the coffee? Such as brewing a French press than using the barrel chips in the ultrasonic bath or even perhaps using cold brew instead of French press?

How about "barrel-aging" the oak chips and whole bean coffee before grinding and brewing? I would be interested if you can affect the roast profile this way as I know there are barrel-aged coffees out there that are aged at green. Also would be interesting if you run the emulsified brew through the centrifuge to see if you can get some clarity back.

Hoffman: You can have your cake and eat it My empty wallet: no

I'm a simple man. I see notification, I stop everything I do. Get a cup of coffee, and start listening to Mr. Hoffmann

I love it best videos. I want to do the oak chips with the same amount of Oak chips you did. My question for you is what coffee would go good with it? I'm all about subtleties

I think it would be really interesting to try centrifuging the immersion coffees after heating/sonication! It would help to separate out the suspended particles or potentially any emulsions, and you could get a better sense of whether the sonication actually impacts the extraction.

I don't like how you taste all the samples consecutively, because the aftertaste of the previous samples might affect the taste of the current sample

I would really like to learn about cold brew from James Hoffmann, if I may say so...

"hope, you have a great d..." what a cliffhanger!!

Cool Video. It’s good to see you hovering over the buy button on various Kickstarter things. I wonder did you go for that V60 like thing with 1502 holes in it? I was tempted but decided not to in the end. I bought a regular V60 instead :)

I am wondering (excuse the sacrilegious thought) - if adding a tiny, really tiny, ammount of a good liquid smoke extract might have a similar effect. (And I am with you - not too fond of strong barrique notes in wine)

Was this weird enough? Yes. The perfect level of weirdness. Now I'm interested in comparing different types of oak to see which types are best. With wines I often see what's described as American oak or European oak barrels. I presume these refer to different oak species.

What about filtering the coffe suspension (I think it is) with a finer filter? Maybe with a hollow fibre filter (like for example Katadyn BeFree), with 0.1 microns? The filter I have at home would not fit the purpose as it also has an active carbon element...

Well now I think the obvious next step would be to try different wood chips and see if any are preferable to the oak! I could see cherry, for one, being interesting, but there are a variety of woods used in drink making. Birch, Sassafras, etc. And I would also be curious to see if soaking the wood in spirits instead of water made a noticeable difference on the final product!

James, I'm surprised you didn't have/use a syringe clarifier for the ultrasonic brew that is typically used for clarifying espresso. Reasons???

“mmmm, good coffee. Sort of an oaky afterbirth.”

your voice is smoothing

Can you try to ultrasonic-infuse your water with the oak 'before' using it to brew the coffee?

Very interesting video. I would suggest use a higher frequency ultrasound. A high-frequency ultrasound (100kHz) is used to clean lab equipment, which generates a smaller cavitation bubble, that might give a more gentle extraction. Wikipedia about this phenomenon: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation

I would think different materials would be more or less conducive to ultrasonic waves. Might be interesting to compare the coffee prepared in a plastic bag or stainless container vs glass.

Sir ! Lets try coffee-tea . I had tried it before, i dont think its good but would like to know your thaughts and assesements to the beverage.

That's 15.1g - James we expect perfection 😃

James, you've made lockdown hair look cool.. my Gaggia machine fucked up at the start of lockdown, and I'm drinking instant right now, Kenco in the metal tin seems OK... but missing the espresso flavour... Thinking of buying the Dualit to match my other appliances... is it any good ?

Me sees James in a lab coat , it’s gonna be a good one !

Love the intros.

wow superb video

Would you consider mixing ground oak (sawdust lol) with your coffee grounds?

What an Intro! Wow

"Sorry for the slurps." That's when I knew I was in for a treat.

Umm weird. I was just thinking about a similar thing this week after stopping at an alcohol brew store to borrow some ideas.

So it’s not a way to age coffee beans? I’ve been trying to find out a way to see where the coffee will be in 2 weeks post roast in several days if possible...

Iv orderd some of your coffee I hope its worth it for the price for 400grams. 10.50 Seasonal one.