Selecting Your Beans Part 1 – the Truth on the Coffee Aisle
7 Comments Published by Tonx December 11th, 2006 in Coffee. Share This
A great cup of coffee begins with great coffee beans. The long aisle in the grocery store and the seeming plethora of options can be daunting but knowing a few brutal truths about coffee will help you see the landscape as it really is.
There are a few things the giant coffee companies don’t want you to know (for instance, what real coffee tastes like). The biggest dirty secret is that roasted coffee has a pretty short shelf life. The fullness of coffee’s vast flavor potential peaks in the first week out of the roaster and rapidly plummets in a way that no fancy packaging will adequately mitigate. The coffee in open bins or bulk bins fares even worse with the exposure to oxygen wiping out much nuance that might have once have made it into your cup.
Freshness is perhaps the most important factor in getting a good brew. If it does not have a roast date it almost certainly was dead on arrival before it hit the shelf.
The majority of familiar coffee brands you’ll encounter in the grocery store are owned by the “Big Four” – Kraft, Nestle, Sara Lee, and Proctor & Gamble. Collectively they account for around 40% of global coffee sales. Their products contain cheap robusta coffee and low grade commodity arabica and at best are a caffeine delivery system slightly less painful than snorting crushed up Vivarin.
Once you become accustomed to fresh coffee its hard to ever go back. Ideally you would buy beans directly from an artisan coffee roaster who provides fresh roasted coffee, roast dated in airtight bags. Ideally you would grind them at home as needed and not in the dirty bulk grinders found at the supermarket. Ideally you would buy coffee at least every week or at worst every other week. Its good to think of buying coffee beans in the same way as you’d think of buying fresh bread and less like you’d regard other packaged goods.
In part 2 I’ll give you advice on choosing your beans and in part 3 I’ll clue you in on some of the better places to get them.
If you’re on the east coast, Jersey Shore Coffee Roasters does it right and shipping is fast. I’m currently working through some Tanzania Peaberry…roasted just 5 days ago. So good.
well, i’m currently buying beans every other week for the most part, so my coffee purchasing experience is not *quite* ideal. :)
thanks for pointing me at dethroner, tonx! joel and i met at the bunker a few years back, iirc, but haven’t crossed paths since.
This may come up in future episodes/posts of coffee week, but one thing to consider is that whole beans will stay fresh longer than anything that has been ground up. Whole roasted beans contain carbon dioxide, which mitigates some of the oxidation – and with all of the volatile oils in coffee beans, the last thing you want is for them to be exposed to too much room temperature air. (The presence of all the oils is also why you dont want to re-brew coffee, repeated heating breaks down more and more of the oils and is why that pot that sits on the burner all day ends up tasting so bad)
Anyways, you can freeze whole beans (and grinds too) for a couple months and it will help some. I used to keep my beans in the fridge, and it probably helps a little, but not that much. Ideally you only grind the amount that you’ll be brewing each time.
If you’re in DC – Swings Coffee roasts their own beans and usually have a pretty good variety.
Along with the coffee aisle, the same goes for your coffee at gas stations, Mac’s, 7-11, dunkin’ donuts, tim hortons, coffee time and any other coffee for about a quarter joint. It is BAD coffee. Not just because it is the cheap commodity beans or that it was probably roasted and ground a year prior to being brewed or that the pot has sat on an element for several hours before you poured it.
People need to know that these high volume coffees are coming majoritively from Brazil and Vietnam – the two largest exporters in the world of coffee. Cheap robusto and overgrown arabica blends. In many cases the big 4 pay fractions of a cent per pound to buy this coffee and you pay not much less per pound than the coffee that is sold in grocery stores.
Buying this coffee contributes to the destruction of the rainforest, unsustainable farming methods, and the inability of these farmers to support their families, get proper medical care or defend their farms from drug cartels. Or best case, they can afford to do one item off of the list.
For the amount of money made per cup by the above mentioned companies, you should be afforded the opportunity to a**lly rape the coffee farmer of your choice over the shop counter while they count out your change. Seems only fair to you.
At a minimum, you should be buying coffee that is fair trade. Where possible, the coffee should also include one or more of the following designations: Organic; Shade Grown; and/or Bird Friendly.
The moral of the story is “find a local roaster”. Columbian, shade-grown, slow roasted, etc. given a month to turn to rat fodder is not worth brewing. If you live in a community without a coffee roaster (consider being the pioneer yourself) or turn to a conscientious on-line retailer like Dietrich’s. Freezing is a partial solution. Putting the coffee in an air-tight container provides some relief. Bottom line: the fresher, the better.
And here’s a shout out to the best coffee roasters in north San Diego county, California, Pannikan!
Oh man. You don’t refrigerate roasted beans or put them in the freezer. Ever. Buy a smaller amount and use it as quickly as possible.
Best site for coffee information? http://www.coffeegeek.com
I roast my own coffee, best method for getting the best and freshest beans.