For budding STEM students, the Coffee Lab is an enigma. At the core of the cold concrete interior of Willamette Hall, undergraduate and graduate scientists can be seen brewing coffee at all hours of the day.

While onlookers are granted the pleasure of viewing the student side of experiments on the cutting edge of coffee science, there are whispers of a mysterious leader, Willamette’s local coffee maestro. While he’s not quite as ominous as rumors imply, the tales ring true in regards to his commitment to both students and coffee.

Chris Hendon, a professor and researcher, has been the driving force of coffee science at University of Oregon since 2020. Hendon, whose mother was a chef, said he had been interested in food for most of his life, but the artisan coffee shop Colonna and Small’s changed the course of his scientific career forever.

In the midst of a PhD program in Theoretical Chemistry at University of Bath, Hendon frequented Colonna and Small’s as a patron and eventually caught the eye of one of the founders, Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood.

Colonna-Dashwood had an interest in chemistry, so Hendon spent his weekends teaching him chemistry and learning the ins-and-outs of brewing high quality coffee.

“At some point we realized maybe there’s something more to this,” Hendon said. “It’s a widely consumed product and people care about it, so why not use that in two ways to do a little bit of good for science communication and try to build trust of the general public in science?”

The pair’s endeavor to brew shots of espresso would leave its mark on coffee history, with their work in chemistry providing the foundation for their partnership.

“We started really working on water chemistry together,” Hendon said. “That’s when it became clear that there was a lot of room for improvement and Maxwell and I teamed up.”

The competitive result: two fifth place finishes in the World Barista Championship, where the top baristas of each country battle for the world title, in 2014 and 2015.
The wins validated the application of chemistry in the field of coffee and provided Hendon recognition within the coffee community. Using his momentum, he published “Water for Coffee” (2015), a guide to water chemistry and its relation to coffee, and the 2016 paper, “The effect of bean origin and temperature on grinding roasted coffee.” The globally recognized study concluded that keeping coffee beans cold prior to grinding allowed baristas to extract more coffee from the beans while speeding up extraction, reducing waste and improving the standard of quality across the board.

Early on, Hendon’s work affected cafes globally. When attending a conference in Sendai, Japan, he noticed a barista implementing his 2016 study. After he asked the barista about his technique, Hendon said, “He pulled out all of my papers which he laminated.”

The research he conducted in coffee continued through post-doctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and eventually at UO.

“At UO they knew I was an expert in coffee,” Hendon said. “But their work in the area didn’t really crank up until 2020.”

While Hendon joined UO staff in 2017, it wasn’t until 2020 when breakthrough study “Systematically Improving Espresso: Insights from Mathematical Modeling and Experiment” was published. The study found a coarse grind size, instead of the fine one used at that time, was optimal for preventing waste and providing homogeneity from shot to shot. The study saved millions of dollars yearly in cafes across the world.

“I pick problems that I think are big and important that no one else is working on,” Hendon said. “That way we can take our time with it and make sure that we get it right.”

For the last four years, Hendon and the students in his lab have been working with electrochemistry — a study of chemical processes involved with electron movement — and its role in coffee. Specifically, the lab aims to understand coffee’s response to electrical stimulation. In January 2024, the lab published a study which explained that a spritz of water on coffee after grinding will provide a better tasting brew since it removes static electricity buildup on the ground coffee.

In a study recently conducted and currently in review, the group sought to understand how electricity affects the flavor profile of a cup of coffee. “We basically connect the battery to coffee and we can measure how strong the cup of coffee is,” Hendon said. “In addition to that, we can measure how dark tasting it is.”
The measurement of a coffee’s roast profile is a widely contested topic among the coffee community. Hendon, comparing the roast profile to its meaty counterpart, said, “the outside of your steak could be black but the inside could be completely raw.”

At this point, the only way to be completely objective is by obtaining a temperature curve for the roast, which Hendon pointed out is to “ask a chef the temperature at which they cook the steak.” Without forcing coffee roasters around the world to give away their secret sauce, these scientists found another way to quantify flavor.

Should the study pass the peer review process and find itself in an esteemed scientific journal, it would push the boundaries of coffee science forward in a major way. “It’s a pretty big deal because the state of the art in the industry right now can only measure strength and can’t do strength and flavor,” Hendon said. “So this is kind of a big step forward.”

At this point in his career, Hendon is globally recognized in the coffee industry, but he admitted that while he likes coffee, funding and student interest are the biggest factors of the lab’s research direction.

“This job is not about my interests. It’s about what we need to do to learn new things about the universe,” Hendon said. “So, if the students are interested in doing computational chemistry, that’s what we’re going to do. Half the group’s funding comes from coffee research, so we’re going to continue to do it for now.”

While some sectors of scientific research have been steeped in uncertainty given the rise of AI technologies and the threat to NIH lab funding, Hendon said coffee science is thriving and the AI induced dream of a standardized flavor metric doesn’t have ground to stand on. “I actually think it’s a baseless dream,” Hendon said. “I think it’s a naive dream. Because why would you want AI to tell you flavor if people can’t tell you flavors?”

While flavor preference has slight differences between people, in the Coffee Lab, all the scientists, like the judges in professional barista competitions, are calibrated. While actually “liking” a brew is subjective, Hendon says all the testers can attest they taste the same flavor notes in the sample.

“Humans are always allowed the right of preference,” Hendon said. “In other words, you’re allowed to taste what you taste and enjoy it, but in my lab you’re not allowed to like it and not be able to describe why.”

Hendon enjoys working with coffee, but the food is just a medium through which to cultivate a deeper understanding of chemical phenomena. “I work on coffee so we can learn broadly new things about the universe to apply to other foods and other chemical problems,” Hendon said.

Though understanding the secrets of the universe is Hendons mantra, at the current stage of his career, he’s in a position to give back to the next generation of scientists. Through his lab, he provides a staging ground for student ideas to grow.

“What brings me joy is the process, not the destination,” Hendon said. “So seeing the students learn is the most important thing.”

For curious coffee scientists, connoisseurs and hobbyists, the best place to connect with Hendon and other knowledgeable staff of the coffee lab is in Willamette Atrium during their weekly coffee hour, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11-12 p.m.

Hendon also co-hosts the podcast “Coffee Literature Review,” which dissects recent highly caffeinated studies.