Good morning, friends,
I’ll be roasting this weekend on Sunday the 24th, then delivering and shipping on Monday. We also have several coffees here for anyone in need before Monday.
The coffees for this week are on the website – and among these, you’ll see an amazing microlot coffee from the Rwabisindu washing station in Rwanda. This is our first experience with a coffee vacuum packed and sealed in mylar bags at origin, and experiments are now showing that this method preserves the original flavors of coffee during shipping far better than traditional jute bags. In the cup, you’ll find a sweet, elegant and complex coffee and a truly special example of this exciting origin.
Those of you who are local will have noticed that our coffee has disappeared from the shelves of local grocery stores. This was a conscious choice on my part, as the more I see of mass market coffee, the more I come to the conclusion that this is just not a good way to sell coffee. I think most grocery store coffee sits there for too long after roasting, and with the way stores work, you’ll never see the actual roasting date unless you are a cryptographer. And since I somehow feel the journey of every bean that leaves our little roastery, I’ve elected to step out of that game.
But, I know that for many of you, this will be the place you’ll buy the majority of your coffee. It takes time and effort to break away and buy specialty products of any kind, be they cheeses from a local shop, fresh produce from a farmers market or fresh coffee from a microroaster. In the cycle of chores we boogie through every week, sometimes the convenience of buying from a grocery store is a necessity.
So, since I still want you all drinking the best, even if it doesn’t come from us, here are some simple tips that should help you navigate the shelves of your local store:
1. Turnover. If the store sells lots of coffee, it will therefore buy newly roasted coffee more often, and your coffee will be fresher, regardless of whether you follow the rest of the advice below or not. See if it looks like they sell a lot of your brand of coffee, and if not, be suspicious. Also, note that the prime shelf space is right there in the middle shelf – and this is where the fast sellers are. Be wary if your favorite coffee is on the bottom shelf.
2. Roasting dates. In a perfect world, all coffee would have a clear roasting date on the bag (like ours), and you would then buy your coffee in the sweet spot of within three weeks of roasting. But, in general, you won’t see these on grocery store coffee – for the simple reason that if they showed them, it would reveal that almost everything on the shelf is past its prime. But, you will often see a coded form of the date that uses the Julian calendar, a sequential rendering of the days of the year. June 1 in this format is 153, while January 1 is 001 and December 31, 365. Dig around a bit on the shelf so you can see how these numbers are used in labeling your favorite coffee.
3. Pick from the back. The stores put the new products in the back so the old ones in front will sell first. Just wait until no one is looking, then reach behind all the bags in front and grab a fresh one from the back. It’s your coffee, and you shouldn’t feel any shame in doing this. Then, with this power, move on to the dairy case, the meat counter and the produce bins – all homes to this strategy from the stores.
4. Is there a valve? Those funny little plastic fittings on the front of our coffee bags are one-way valves that allow the coffee to be packaged just after roasting. Coffee “outgases” CO2 for several days after roasting, and without this valve, well packaged coffee bags would literally pop! What this means is that, if there is no valve, the roaster will have “pre-staled” the coffee by letting it sit for a half day or so before packaging it. This saves them a whopping nickel or so on each bag, so boo hiss on those who do this.
5. Smell the valve. I know, this sounds funny, but the cool thing about these valves is that they let you sample the smell of what’s inside. Put the bag up to your nose and squeeze it – and if what comes out smells funky, you may want to move on to another bag (or roaster).
(I pause for a moment to apologize if I have now turned you into a lurking, bag sniffing, from the back grabbing coffee snob. It’s worth it, though.)
6. Learn what stale coffee smells like. I think coffee is fascinating, because it goes through so many chemical changes as it ages. Very freshly roasted coffee doesn’t have a lot of smell. Several days later, it smells amazing (as it “rests”), and it stays in this place for ten days or so – and then it starts to begin a decline to staleness. The smells between the peak of good flavor and staleness can still be good smells, but with some practice you’ll learn to spot coffee on its way down and can use this skill in combination with the valve sniffing to inform your purchases.
7. Buy local. According to Google Maps, it is 515 miles between here and York, Pennsylvania, which is the location of Starbucks’ nearest roasting plant. Pownal (home of Matt’s Coffee) is right next door. Coffee by Design is in Portland and Wicked Joe is in Brunswick. Look for locally roasted coffee and you’ll almost always find a product that turns over faster and that uses more unique, smaller lot coffees. If you aren’t local to Maine, do a Google search on the name of your town and “coffee roaster” to find my brethren near you.
8. Buy whole bean coffee. Do this simple experiment. Take a coffee bean and measure the surface area. Write this down. Then grind it. Measure the surface area of the particles and write this down. Compare the massive number from the second measurement to the small one from the first. That is the difference in how much of your coffee is being exposed to air, which is the enemy of coffee. This is why I obsess over grinding your coffee fresh – it really matters. And OK, I lied – that wasn’t a simple experiment.
I hope this helps you all enjoy a better morning cuppa. Oh, and what I really meant by all of this is that you should buy your coffee from us. In the interest of full disclosure and all.
Thanks for your support, folks - enjoy the weekend!
Kent
