Maths zeroes in on perfect cup of coffee - BBC News

"Our overall idea is to have a complete mathematical model of coffee brewing that you could use to design coffee machines, rather like we use a theory of fluid and solid mechanics to design racing cars." Dr Lee told BBC News. He said this study was a step towards that goal, adding: "We looked at the effect of coffee grain size on the way that coffee comes out of a filter coffee machine. "The really surprising thing to us is that there are really two processes by which coffee is extracted from grains. There's a very quick process by which coffee's extracted from the surface of the grains. And then there's a slower tail-off where coffee comes out of the interior of the grains."