Top all-time · #5825
Coffee ad Astra
Personal blog · coffeeadastra.comsciencedata
Coffee ad Astra is a personal blog at coffeeadastra.com about science and data. Since 2019, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times, most often “An App to Measure Your Coffee Grind Size Distribution”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Jonathan Gagné's blog on the physics and practice of coffee brewing, including experimental work on extraction, water chemistry and grind and steep techniques. Commenters link it and call it worth reading.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Photo by Noé Aubin-Cadot This page is dedicated to methods and data to improve the preparation of pour over coffee Coffee Blog This is where you will find all of my previous blog posts about coffee. View Blog The Grind Size Application I wrote a computer application to analyze the particle size dist
Most-linked posts?
- An App to Measure Your Coffee Grind Size Distribution5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-01-08
- How to Brew Better Coffee with a V602 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-09-24
What Hacker News says?
To add: The Physics of Filter Coffee : https://www.scottrao.com/products/physics-of-filter-coffee-j... , 2021 ISBN 978-0578246086 https://coffeeadastra.com/ Far as I can tell, Jonathan Gagné doesn't have a dedicated page on his website, it's hosted by Scott Rao. His blog does have a lot of interesting experimental work on the physics which led to the book. As I mentioned, I think this is an interesting academic piec…
Comment linking /
on “Phase behavior of Cacio and Pepe sauce”Submitted An App to Measure Your Coffee Grind Size Distribution as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI left my Aeropress unused in my drawers for years for that reason, until some smart people worked out a technique that turns it into a highly effective immersion brewer. Check this technique out https://coffeeadastra.com/2021/09/07/reaching-fuller-flavor-... The gist of it is: 1. Grind finer (like, nearly espresso fine) 2. Steep for much much longer (like 10 minutes) 3. Don’t press too hard (3) is generally applica…
Comment linking /2021/09/07/reaching-fuller-flavor-profiles-with-the-aeropress/
on “Cold-brewing of coffee by picosecond-pulsed laser extraction”Submitted What Affects Brew Time as a story · 16 points
HN discussionA similar result was found by J. Gagné [0] five years ago, though I don't think he publishes his results outside of his blog (which is well worth a read by the way). [0] https://coffeeadastra.com/2020/05/23/the-physics-of-kettle-s...
Comment linking /2020/05/23/the-physics-of-kettle-streams/
on “Coffee Too Weak? Try This”Submitted A Python App to Measure Your Coffee Grind Size Distribution (2019) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionNot sure if very reliable but there's an app to analyse size distribution using camera: https://coffeeadastra.com/2019/04/07/an-app-to-measure-your-...
Comment linking /2019/04/07/an-app-to-measure-your-coffee-grind-size-distribution-2/
on “DIY Espresso (2020)”Submitted Analyzing coffee grind size consistency and distribution as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThat basically has already been well researched: https://awasteof.coffee/how-to/mixing-water/ https://coffeeadastra.com/category/water-for-coffee/ https://www.scottrao.com/blog/lotus-water-drops And is a functional requirement of a bunch Specialty Coffee Association stuff.
Comment linking /category/water-for-coffee/
on “Method for reducing coffee acidity”Submitted How to Brew Better Coffee with a V60 (2018) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Water hardness graph: Interesting graph, but I was missing some explanation. Here's the figure text, from [1]: "Water properties for various recipes, cities and bottles. The dashed line represents a 1:1 relation, and color lines correspond to different recommended ranges. In the figure above, you can see the range recommended by the SCA (green bar), the region recommended by the Colonna-Dashwood & Hendon (2015) Wa…
Comment linking /2018/12/16/water-for-coffee-extraction/
on “Reusing Yesterday’s Coffee Grounds for Another Cup of Coffee”Submitted How to Brew Better Coffee with a V60 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Mechanism Behind Astringency in Coffee (2022) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Python App to Measure Your Coffee Grind Size Distribution as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
