Think about it.
You go to the grocery store, pull a jar of your favorite freeze-dried coffee off the shelf, bring it home, brew it, and sit down to relax with a cup of wonderfully fresh coffee.
Really?
The truth is that most off-the-shelf supermarket coffee is a blend of small amounts of low-grade Arabica–coffee beans grown for flavor–and large amounts of robusta–coffee beans grown for their high caffeine content–shipped for processing from roasting plants thousands of miles away, then ground, packaged, and sent to your grocery supplier’s warehouse, to sit, for who knows how long, before actually making it into your shopping cart.
If you buy your own whole roasted beans, the recommended room temperature storage period is no longer than two weeks. You can freeze whole roasted beans for up to six weeks. Freshly ground beans, because their increased surface area allows the essential coffee oils to evaporate, have an even shorter shelf life before they grow stale.
Compare those safe storage times to the time between when you bought your jar of coffee and the expiration date on the jar. Then decide if you need to rethink your definition of a fresh cup of Joe.
The ideal situation is to grind just the amount of beans that you intend to brew immediately, and to drink your coffee within twenty minutes. That’s right, twenty minutes is the time it takes for the flavor to peak and then begin to dissipate.
If you get your coffee from a coffee bar, find one that does its own roasting and buy the most recently roasted beans. Roasted coffee beans release carbon dioxide, so idea to give them a “resting time” in which they can de-gas before you grind them. Resting times can range from six to forty-eight hours, so ask your barista what he or she recommends.
Of course, the conditions under which coffee is prepared can have as much effect on the final product as the quality and freshness of the coffee beans themselves.
Fresh coffee, really fresh coffee, is out there. Find some, and enjoy.
