gadfly — a person who disrupts the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions.
In Plato’s The Apology, Socrates gives a speech to defend himself against charges of corrupting the youth and not believing in the city’s gods. During this speech, he relates himself to a gadfly, claiming his questioning was “to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth.” Aiming to be in a similar vein, Socratic Coffee attempts to question popular positions and statements in the coffee community. We hope to explore variables associated with roasting and brewing great coffee as objectively as possible, presenting the methods and results of those inquiries here so that you, the reader, may draw your own conclusions. Our hope is to utilize a Socratic dialogue to arrive at interesting questions and then examine them methodically.
To paraphrase Socrates, we know that we know nothing.
The Socratic Coffee team is made up of coffee and research professionals with decades of experience, along with an advisory network of various experts (e.g., analytical chemistry, water chemistry, refractometry, food science, physics). We simply love coffee and want to use our skill sets to help provide the community with quality data assessing various devices, methods, and claims. If you’re a like-minded individual and want to see how you can contribute, feel free to contact us!
Our core team
Joe {BA, chef; day job: coffee professional; role at SC: director of operations, social media, & experiments}
Jeremy {PhD; day job: consultant and researcher; role at SC: science director}
Our advisors
Jason {PhD; physics advisor}
Dave {PhD; chemistry advisor}
Alyssa {PhD; statistics}
We also get plenty of advice and assistance from others as-needed!