Hi All . . .
Gosh, was that sixty degree day yesterday NICE or what? I went out on the bike at lunch and damn near never came back. During my travels, I hung out on the bench in front of Derosiers for a bit eating some pizza (they have an excellent beer selection, by the way), and every person who passed by smiled and told me what a nice day it was for a bike ride. Ahhhhhh . . . I so agree.
This weekend, I’ll be roasting on Sunday sometime, then delivering and shipping on Monday. Please send your orders by 10:00 Sunday morning to be sure of getting your favorites for this week. Coffees for this time around are on the website (www.freeportcoffee.com)
I have some awesome coffees here (Ethiopia, Burundi, Sulawesi, Road Trip and Indo Limbo) if you need something over the weekend.
In this week’s article, I will explore the subject of what happens to coffee after it is roasted, and why freshness, packaging and storage matter in your daily enjoyment of your cup.
If you want some background on all the steps leading up to this, here are some articles on growing and harvesting, processing and the progression of beans during roasting.
But here, we’ll start from the moment I open the door of the roaster and allow the coffee to flow into the cooling bin. A powerful fan sucks the remaining smoke away from the beans and draws room temperature air across them as a stirrer arm agitates the coffee. Several minutes later, I open another door, and the coffee beans trickle down a chute into a bucket. And within five minutes of that event, the coffee is measured into three-ply bags with a one-way valve and heat-sealed.
Resting Coffee
It is a misconception of coffee roasting that this fresh-out-of-the-roaster coffee is the best coffee can be. It’s not, actually. Coffee needs to “rest” after roasting, for at least 24 hours, but ideally for more like three days . . . and some have described resting their espresso blends for as long as ten days.
I liken what happens to the flavors during this time to the process of aging wine – the coffee takes shape, brightness disappears and the coffee mellows. These changes are quite pronounced, and if you are getting coffee from us the day after roasting, taste it that day and each day over the next week – you should see an obvious change as time goes on.
Outgassing
Freshly roasted coffee also powerfully emits CO2 just after roasting, and the one-way valves on good packaging allow this gas to escape. If I sealed just roasted coffee in an airtight bag, it would literally pop several hours later!
But what this means when you DON’T see a valve on a bag of coffee is that either its not a very good bag (meaning that it is not airtight, and the CO2 gets out on its own) or, as is common with most supermarket coffee, the coffee has been “staled” before packing.
Staling
A secondary benefit of this outflow of CO2 is that it protects the coffee from oxygen – and as the outgassing slows, the coffee becomes progressively more vulnerable to becoming stale. In the process of staling, roasted coffee loses moisture, flavor elements break down, and the oils in the coffee become rancid. It is this rancid oil that gives stale coffee its distinctive aroma. Try to get to know this scent – and you can then check the coffee you are about to buy by holding your nose up to the one way valve and squeezing the bag.
Good coffee packaging is designed to ward off the two biggest enemies of coffee, oxygen and light, and flushing the bags with an inert gas (like nitrogen) helps to also protect the delicate beans. See below for more on packaging.
Visible Oil
All coffee beans contain oils, and you will see coffee where the oil has come to the surface, creating a shiny effect. This is common in dark roasts, where the oil comes to the surface either during the roasting process or very soon thereafter, but oil also will rise to the surface as coffee ages. If you store your coffee at room temperature, watch for tiny droplets forming on your beans – and when you see these, it’s a good time to get your coffee into the freezer (or drink it).
When the oil is inside the coffee, it is protected, and when it comes to the surface, the interaction between the oils and air will hasten the staling of coffee. It is for this reason that darker roasted coffees will go stale faster than light roasts.
Ground Coffee
So, oxygen and light are the enemy, right? Imagine now what happens with LOTS MORE oxygen and light. Bad things happen.
To understand the effect of grinding coffee on staling, consider the surface area of a coffee bean. Then grind that bean. The resulting surface area exposed to air and light increases by several orders of magnitude. For those of you who live here where it is cold, its like the difference in going outside in January with no gloves versus being stark naked. You’d be a LOT colder with the increased surface area.
And this is why coffee should be ground just before it is brewed. The shelf life of coffee goes downhill in a hurry once you grind it. (If you need recommendations on a good grinder, write me back?)
Buying Coffee
As you see here, the clock starts ticking as soon as the coffee leaves the roaster – and it begins to go stale almost immediately. Good packaging can delay the staling, but it doesn’t prevent it – and once the bag is opened, even coffee flushed with gas will stale faster than freshly roasted coffee.
This means that you should buy your coffee as near to the roasting date as possible, but unfortunately most roasters won’t tell you when that was! In practicality, they can’t put the roasting dates on the bags of coffee sold in the grocery store, because then everyone would know that most of this coffee is on the older side – sometimes VERY old.
You are, however, offered some clues. My pet peeve among these is the “Best By” date, an arbitrary point at which that roaster would have you believe that the coffee is no longer drinkable. One local roaster sells its GROUND coffee with a “Best By” date as long as two years after roasting, and trust me, that coffee was history a long time before then.
Another device is to use a lengthy code that contains a roasting date in the format of the Julian Calendar. Here’s a way of decoding those, if you are interested.
The best solution is to know the roasting date. We print ours on the bags (on the bottom – where it says “Roasting Date”), and many of the better roasters who sell mail order pledge to ship the coffee on the day it was roasted.
Also, pay attention to how your coffee is packaged. If you buy coffee in bulk (meaning from bins where they scoop your coffee), it will often be packaged in a plain paper bag, or one with a thin poly liner. Here, I strongly recommend you transfer this coffee when you get home to an airtight container, and then store it in a cool, dark place.
If the bag is more substantive, you can store it in these, but wrap the bag tightly after you open it – and maybe add a rubber band to help keep the oxygen out.
If you have chosen a roaster on the basis of their coffee bags being recyclable or compostable, note that these bags typically have very poor barrier properties – be careful of these if you like fresh-tasting coffee.
To Freeze or Not to Freeze
Should you freeze coffee? My standard answer to this question is that, if you have purchased coffee that was just roasted, protect it well and drink it within three weeks, then no. But, if you don’t know when it was roasted – or it will take longer than this to drink, then freezing is the best way to preserve the flavors. Don’t store your coffee in the refrigerator, as the moisture that flushes in and out of your container each time you open it will hasten the staling of your coffee.
If you intend to freeze the coffee, and it was just roasted, let it rest a few days and then freeze it. You’ll want the advantages of the resting period in developing the flavor.
For more on this subject, here’s an intensive test of the flavor impacts of freezing coffee:
My hope in this article is to give you an awareness of this progression of coffee over time that you can use to make better buying decisions. I know (alas) that you can’t always get your coffee from us, and by dialing in these important considerations, you can purchase coffees that are freshly roasted, store them wisely and get the most out of your cup. Oh, and write me back if you need recommendations on a good grinder.
That’s all for now, folks – have a great weekend!
Kent
