Inside an Espresso Bed

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When pulling a shot of espresso, there are complicated physics at play. The ground coffee is tamped into a puck-like bed of grains, through which high-temperature, high-pressure water is forced. Here, researchers used X-ray tomography to visualize how and when water moves through the bed, which affects how flavors extract.

Composite images of water penetrating a bed of finely ground coffee (left) and a bed of coarsely ground coffee (right).

In a finely ground bed, water is relatively slow to penetrate the bed, but moves in fairly uniformly. Water can get into the coarse grind a little faster but does so less uniformly. With the new experimental technique in place, the team is interested in seeing how water temperature affects infiltration and what solids get extracted. (Image credit: top – R. Wicks, experiment – J. Foster et al.; research credit: J. Foster et al.; via Physics World)

Inside an Espresso Bed

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