With coffee coming in many weird and wonderful forms, it’s the go-to beverage for a high percent of Americans. So what makes the perfect cup of coffee?

Researchers from the University of Bath in England studied coffee beans – in particular the process of grinding them. The grinding of coffee beans is seen to many connoisseurs as the most important part of the brewing process and it seems temperature plays an important role when it comes to extracting maximum flavor.

The team, made up of Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood and Christopher Hendon, experimented with grinding beans at different temperatures ranging from room temperature to -196 degrees celsius. They found chilled coffee beans provided a better distribution of fine particles. The finer the particles, the more flavor is produced which also means you get more for your buck with more flavor from less amount of beans, according to a UPI report.

“If you have small grinds you can push flavour extraction upwards. We found that chilling the beans tightens up this process and can give higher extractions with less variance in the flavour – so you would have to brew it for less time, or could get more coffee from the same beans,” Hendon stated.

With the coffee industry continuously reaching for better quality of flavor, this could be helpful in establishing better products. Of course, this will also change our own bean-storage habits and minimize the amount of coffee grinds we throw away.

“It will alter the taste, because subtle changes in particle size distributions make a huge difference in rate of extraction. I wouldn’t be surprised if people struggled to achieve balanced extractions. It could have a major impact for the industry. People are trying to produce a very high quality drink with really quite powerful tools and are willing to try new things.”

So next time you reach for the coffee beans to make that perfect morning brew, make sure they’ve been sitting in the refrigerator or even frozen before you grind.

The findings were published in the journal Nature.