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Great Coffee with Fresh Beans

Thursday, May 14th, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

In a perfect world, if you wanted the best possible specialty Colorado coffee, your day would start around 4:00 AM. You would start the day by grabbing a handful or two of unroasted coffee beans, depending on the amount of coffee you planned on brewing. You’d then pop the beans into the coffee bean roaster and roast them. Right after roasting, you would toss them into a grinder, and grind them up. Then you’d brew the coffee. After the brew was finished dripping or steaming or pressing, depending on your coffee maker, you’d sit out on the deck with your favorite coffee cup and enjoy the Colorado morning with fresh air and a good cup of brew!

The best coffee is the freshest coffee and that comes from unroasted beans which are roasted and ground on the same day that you plan to brew. Don’t roast too much, because you will want a GREAT brew tomorrow. Let’s face it. This routine is not possible for most folks, so we have to make do with what we can.

Roasting beans is, however, something of a ‘cooking’ specialty. Unless you’re willing to invest some fairly expensive pieces of equipment, the results are often less than satisfactory. Not to mention that - even when done correctly - the roasting beans can fill the house with odors that take time to dissipate and the smell is a little too much, even for a die hard coffee drinker like me.

Beans, even after roasting, will stay fresh for a while. Freshly roasted beans naturally release small amounts of carbon dioxide which helps to keep oxygen away from the bean, delaying spoilage. If stored in an airtight container, especially with a drying agent, they’ll retain their good flavor and aroma for up to a week.

Naturally, the closer to roasting they’re ground and consumed, the fresher they’ll be. But even after a few days they can still produce a stellar grind and a superior brew. After two weeks the flavor may still be acceptable, even though aroma will no longer be first rate. Whole bean coffee stored at even optimum conditions will be dull after a month.

Ideally, if you live near a coffee roaster, you want to figure out how much you drink every day and go down to the roaster knowing how much fresh roasted coffee you’ll need for two weeks.

Get a coffee canister with an airtight seal that you can purchase for under $20. You can get them cheaper, but they’ll not work as well and you will not be happy with the results, believe me. I have seen them going for over $30 and since I only need two weeks worth, I have not been able to justify the additional cost.

This post will get you going. If you have any questions, leave me a comment. I will answer you back. I hope you are enjoying a nice brew of coffee.

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