"I make every effort to get my coffee in your hands at the peak of perfection. I roast only after you order it and pack it as soon as it cools. But even if you don’t buy Kona Ken’s Coffee, then at least choose a local coffee roaster that can tell you the date your coffee choice was roasted, Try to stay within the two day to seven day range and you’ll enjoy a more flavorful product."
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WHY BUY FRESH ROASTED COFFEE?
Believe it or not, 99% of the coffee out there is stale. The good news is that stale coffee is drinkable if you have never had truly fresh coffee. The bad news is that once you have tasted truly fresh coffee, you'll be forever hooked. That's because coffee, just a few days out of the roaster, is nature’s most flavorful drink – more complex than even wine – containing well over 900 flavor compounds to dance on your taste buds. After a mere ten days however, you would be lucky to see half that number. A full month out and you will be lucky if 10% of the coffees’ original flavor is still intact.
How do you know if coffee is stale? A simple test: If it tastes bitter or flat, then it is too old. Coffee is actually known by connoisseurs as a sweet beverage. But shhh... you are not supposed to know that. And who doesn't want you to know? Coffee companies who make their living on convenience. And yes, believing that freshness is as simple as ‘burping’ air out of a coffee container – is convenient. Roasted coffee outgasses after the roasting process with peak flavor typically occurring within 24-48 hours. Within a week the beans become progressively staler with much of the flavor complexity lost. Ground coffee becomes stale in a matter of hours.
Consider then the vacuum packed packets of coffee available in a normal supermarket. Since roasted coffee outgasses after roasting, the whole or ground beans have been left exposed to air for sufficient time for the outgassing to cease resulting in the coffee being stale before it is packed.
In contrast, green beans can have a shelf life of one year or longer before any noticeable degradation in quality occurs. Some specialty beans are deliberately aged to bring out desirable taste attributes and in the case of monsooned coffee beans, left semi-exposed to the weather. One would not be mistaken in thinking that there are many similarities between coffee beans and wine with both being heavily influenced by their respective environments. Soil, weather, farming techniques, etc. have dramatic effects on the flavor characteristics of both wine and coffee. But there is one significant difference, wine is better aged while coffee is better fresh.
Matt at freshroastsystems.com graciously allowed me to reprint the above, which I feel is an excellent explanation of the “freshness” issue.
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