Laser Coffee Gives Cold-Brew A Super-Speed Upgrade

The research team described the process of laser-brewing coffee in great detail, but we’ll attempt to break it down into something slightly easier to digest (much like actual cold brew coffee). In order to speed up the brewing process, the researchers utilized a special kind of laser and adjusted its settings down to the picosecond, which means one trillionth of a second. The laser performs 125-picojoule pulses which last just 10 picoseconds. All of this goes through a mix of ground coffee and water for about three minutes, many, many times over — as much as 80,000 times per second, in fact. This seems to replace the ultra-long method of cold brewing that is currently in use.

In order to accurately measure their own success, the researchers filtered the solution that they produced and then compared it to a proper 24-hour cold brew as well as a traditional hot cup of joe. The resulting finds are highly promising. The so-called laser brew had almost the same acidity as the 24-hour cold brew, and both of them were significantly less acidic than regular hot coffee. In terms of caffeine levels, laser coffee was closer to hot coffee than it was to cold brew, which can often retain more caffeine and trigonelline than its warmed-up counterpart. However, it’s possible to make laser coffee more flavorful and higher in caffeine by brewing it for a few more minutes, the scientists say.

The team has high hopes for commercialization and plans to work on laser-extracted coffee systems that could later be used in coffee shops and various other places. Perhaps the next time you pick up a cold brew at a café (in a good few years, mind you), it will have been made by a laser.