Roasted coffee beans that are ground when cold give smaller particles than those ground at room temperature, which could affect the drink's flavour.
Christopher Hendon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and his colleagues ground coffee beans (grinding burr pictured) and measured particle size, comparing beans from four countries and also those from a single source that were kept at four different temperatures before grinding. They found that particle-size distribution was similar across beans from different parts of the world. But particles became smaller and more uniform in size as the temperature dropped, with the largest change occurring between room temperature and −19 °C.
Smaller and more uniformly sized coffee particles could release more flavour during brewing and might allow more coffee to be brewed from the same amount of grounds, the authors suggest.
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Cold coffee beans grind smaller. Nature 532, 417 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/532417b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/532417b
