Understanding Extraction: A Scientific View of the Brew Coming to Oakland

From a recent cupping at The Crown in Oakland. Daily Coffee News photo by Lily Kubota.

Bay Area coffee professionals and home brewing obsessives have a rare opportunity this week to explore the bleeding edge of research into coffee flavor science.

The Crown — which is a brand-spanking-new lab, education space, tasting room and more by green coffee importer Royal Coffee in Oakland — is hosting an event this Friday, March 22, called Understanding Extraction.

Perhaps no one understands coffee extraction better than the event’s featured speaker, UC Davis Professor of Chemical Engineering and UC Davis Coffee Center Founding Director William Ristenpart.

Ristenpart has helped lead the joint research being conducted over the past two years by the Coffee Center and the Specialty Coffee Association into the fundamentals of brewing science. The Crown’s Evan Gilman said their whole team has been in touch with the Coffee Center for the good part of those two years. Following a team-wide visit to UC Davis and an invitation to collaborate, violá, an educational coffee event was born.

“UC Davis is doing some of the deepest coffee research being made public at the moment — though I’m sure the industry has yet more proprietary research — and we’d like to give people a place to interact with the people who are responsible for the research that’s changing the industry,” Gilman recently told DCN.

According to the organizers, the session will include, “the examination of data showing specific sensory and consumer-liking attributes of different extraction protocols, different roast levels, and even fractions of coffee extractions,” among other sensory explorations.

Tickets for the free event are available here. The Crown is located at 2523 Broadway in Oakland, California.