Friday, September 25, 2015

Let's Have a Conversation About Coffee Extraction DIY_eJuice

I've been thinking about this a lot in the past couple days. I extracted some espresso through the method in the sidebar, and the flavor is incredible... But upon further investigation it seems like there's too many lipids left in the base for a safe vape.

So last night I scoured the web for information about lipids, how they dissolve/absorb into liquids of differing polarities, which brewing methods extract most/less lipids and this is what I've come up with.

Standard drip brewing relies on gravity to extract flavor from the bean and exposes only those flavor oils just under the surface of the grounds to the brewing water. Espresso brewing forces water in to the interior cell wall of the tightly packed grounds, extracting by pressure what gravity alone can’t: emulsified oils, sugars and lipids that give espresso the intense and complex flavor profile for which it is renowned.

If this is true, then a standard drip brew/pour over with no pressurization would probably be the best method of extracting flavor molecules from the coffee grounds without getting the same level of lipids as soak and shake/aeropress/ect. Taking this one step further, coffee brews that are filtered through filter paper have been found to contain less than 7mg of lipids per 150ml of brew - this is compared to 60-160mg/150ml of nonfiltered or espresso style brews.

Since lipids dissolve/extract MUCH easier in solvents of lower polarity, I believe we could use something like methanol or ethanol (still polar, but is much closer to non-polarity than water, propylene glycol, and vegetable glycerin - methanol would extract the lipids more efficiently, but I would feel better about using ethanol because of methanol's toxicity) to pour through the coffee beans before we do the extraction to try to extract out as much of the lipids as possible. Using some sort of alcohol is preferable too, since it will be very easy to evaporate any lingering molecules from our flavor brew once we're finished. Combine all of this with the fact that lipids turn from a liquid oil to a solid fat based on temperature (the colder, the more solid), I believe we can get almost all of our lipid content out of our flavor.

Here's how my method would work - keep in mind I have yet to actually test this. First, we would take a medium-fine grind, scoop out 1tbs per 30ml of our desired flavor base (VG would technically be better for avoiding lipids based on its polarity, but PG would work much better with the paper filters). Then we would rinse the paper filter with water to rinse away paper artifacts, add the grinds, and pour cold ethanol through them, making sure to soak every bit of grinds thoroughly. The colder the better, because we don't want the ethanol extracting our flavor out before we get to it. Then we would heat our flavor base to ~196-200 degrees F, and perform a pourover coffee brew with our PG/VG. Once it has strained out (it will take a while), we can use a refrigerator or freezer to get the brew as cold as possible. Once it's cold, and whatever lipids are left are nice and solid, we run it through a paper filter a second time, then use a hair dryer or heat gun or something in a well ventilated area to dissolve off any remnants of ethanol that might remain (you'll definitely be able to smell the alcohol if there's any left).

I'm hoping this pourover method will be enough to extract enough flavoring from the coffee grounds to be useable. If not, I believe we could do a hybrid of this extraction method and the one on the sidebar - as in the mason jar, hot water bath with grounds, shake it up method - only at the beginning run ethanol through the grounds and at the end filter through a paper filter, refrigerate and filter out through a paper filter again to still achieve the same goal - however this pourover method would in theory leave us with less lipids.

Can I get some critique on this? Am I missing anything?



Submitted September 25, 2015 at 09:24PM by pint07 http://ift.tt/1iQ9Vq3 DIY_eJuice

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