It’s something the coffee industry is obsessed with (and its something I talk about a lot too). But what is under-extraction and what is over-extraction? To put it simply, it’s a taste perception. We call coffee that tastes: flat, boring or lacks flavour; as under-extracted and coffee that tastes: burnt, bitter or overpowering as over-extracted.

To be more exact, around 30% of the grounds we use to make coffee are soluble in water. But not all of this 30% is desirable. There are flavours we would rather leave behind as they don’t taste so good.
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Earlier this year, James Hoffmann wrote a post on his blog about his experiments with a wine aerator. He found by pouring brewed coffee through such a device made the coffee taste sweeter and gave the flavours greater clarity.

How does an aerator work?

Water (which makes up a large percentage of both coffee and wine) naturally contains dissolved oxygen molecules. It’s these molecules that support marine life in rivers and seas. (more…)