Toot

Written by Tilde Lowengrimm on 2025-01-19 at 22:15

My general preference is only to heat coffee during the actual extraction.

Keeping a beverage warm from the bottom often involves the liquid next to the heating element getting a fair bit hotter than the target temperature to deal with the vertical temperature gradient. This makes more of a difference over time (think diner coffee on a hot plate), and it's not just due to staleness & oxidation working faster! The warmer the beverage is kept, the faster volatile aromatics evaporate, and so those flavor notes gradually drain out of the beverage and into the air, while non-volatiles like tannins remain. Though of course this is slower under a layer of lipids (latte) than just a watery suspension/solution exposed to air.

My specific preference is actually to cool espresso straight out of the portafilter. There are complicated setups which can be used for this (especially if you're doing a higher-volume coffee extraction, like a pour-over), but I just keep some espresso/cortado glasses in the freezer. Especially for a milk drink where the bulk of the thermal mass is the milk, this lets you preserve more of the aromatics while you finish the preparation, and can reduce the impact of something like a hot shot.

I personally prefer lukewarm beverages closer to 130°F, so this isn't a huge issue for me, and my espresso & milk setups are incredibly easy to clean (9Barista & Subminimal NanoFoamer Pro V1). However! If I'm planning to enjoy a beverage more or less immediately — that is to say, right after cleanup, rather than later — I'll pull into a cold glass, then transfer to my drinking vessel which has been kept warm with hot water only immediately before incorporating the milk. If that's not doing it, you can improve the odds with more thermal mass in your mug (heavier, thicker), or using something double-wall insulated. Personally, I enjoy my morning half-caff breve flat white out of the double-wall travel mug from my Keith Titanium lightweight travel coffee apparatus, which is the perfect size and keeps things warm throughout purely passively.

But I haven't really given it much thought.

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