12/26/2021
I wrote this to a friend wondering about his new Keurig. Not the best timing, but the information is timeless. It's a little late now, but if you wish, here is some advice from a coffee roaster for anyone who might be interested in this topic: Keurigs are expensive; they tend to break down after a year or two; and worse, they lock you into stale coffee in expensive little K cups. They do make a "eurocup" that can use other coffee. Coffee, however, is NOT like wine -- it does not get better with age. In fact, coffee is like most other ingredients you eat -- the best fish, vegetables, herbs, etc... ought to be fresh. Once coffee is roasted, the oxidization process starts. For about one month after coffee has been roasted, you are drinking pure heaven. There is no aftertaste or bitterness and thus there is no need to mask the nastiness with additives like cream, sugar, flavoring etc... News flash -- coffee IS a flavor. 99 per cent of the coffee bags, boxes or cans on shelves in stores have NO ROAST DATE listed anywhere. That is by design. To make it appear like they care about freshness, they have a "USE BY" date at least a year after the coffee was roasted. Knowing the date the coffee was roasted is important because about one month after it was roasted, coffee starts to undergo a chemical change that not only brings the bitterness and aftertaste but also gives people health symptoms like jitters, upset stomach, and headaches. If you drink coffee within a month after it was roasted, you have none of the above. I cannot tell you how many people I have given fresh roasted coffee to who previously had these symptoms but now have none. Freshness is the whole reason we started roasting our own coffee about 15 years ago: and profits from that little side hustle (with zero advertising) paid for 43% of our house here on Damariscotta Lake. What we saved personally by not needing to buy creamer anymore to mask the nastiness alone saved us about $150 per year or well over $2000 so far (two airfares to Europe, I figure). We have had customers return from both Hawaii and Jamaica with their coveted "Kona" and "Blue Mountain" green (unroasted) beans that they bought at plantations they toured. In both cases I roasted a pound for each and they both said, they could not tell the difference from the good quality arabica beans we normally roasted for them. I gave each two bags of our beans for one of their coveted brands, roasted and drank it and agreed with them: they got the better deal. If I could have either the most expensive bean in the world (expensive only because low supply means high price) roasted who knows when or a basic Columbian or any other bean I roast roasted this past month, I would always take the fresh roast no matter the difference in price. And I would never under any circumstances stink up my roasting equipment with that crazy monkey p**p coffee -- Copi Luak! Think about it. Would you like vine ripe tomatoes and fresh herbs on your salad or canned tomatoes and canned McCormick basil? My advice to people who truly love coffee is to get a basic drip coffee maker and drink coffee that you know when it was roasted and keep that date less than one month since the roast date. You can even save money by picking up a used drip machine at a Good Will for under $10. Before the current supply shortage jacked up the price another hundred and twenty dollars, I used to recommend a very cool looking, hand assembled in the Netherlands coffee maker, that hits the magic brew temperature of around 195 degrees instantly and brews 10 cups in 4 minutes. If you can splurge $370 rather than the for-years old price of $250, check out the Technivorm Moccamasters in a variety of cool colors on amazon.com. We have a red and a silver one. One final tip that our customers discovered and told us about that we now do sometimes for ourselves with some left-over roasts and recommend is that when you get several bags of fresh-roasted coffee, open and use the first bag and put the other bags in the freezer till you are ready to open and use each bag. Do not take the bags in and out of the freezer because the temperature change creates moisture. Simply take out the next bag and start brewing. The bags should be the more expensive mylar rather than the cheaper paper bags. This way the coffee can last 6 months or so with a minimum of degradation -- the taste is 95 percent as good as fresh. One final thing. There is a normal process of introducing people to fresh-roasted coffee that we ourselves went through. Back when we were drinking regular (stale) coffee we liked "dark-roasts" or "strong coffee." This was because we wanted to taste some kind of flavor punching through all the aftertaste, bitterness and additives we poured in like cream, sugar and "flavors." When we started drinking fresh-roasted coffee, it took a while for us to start appreciating the nuances of the taste of coffee itself. We then started to prefer lighter roasts wherein we could taste more of the bean flavor and less of the roast flavor. Our preference for most good quality beans now is what is called "full-city" roast where the beans are the color of milk chocolate and where a slight roasty edge supplements (not masks) the rich flavors of the beans. One last note. Coffee is a very personal psychologically therapeutic experience. Like any form of self-medicating, the "medicine" can be healthy or harmful. The history of coffee in the twentieth century reveals that people can learn to love and self-medicate with fresh or nasty stale coffee. From about 1900-1930 people drank fresh-roasted coffee. In rural areas, general stores used to have big barrels of green (unroasted) beans that people would buy and go home and roast on their stovetops. You can sometimes find these old roasting pans in antique stores. During that time, in more urban areas, small regional roasters roasted for people locally. During the 1930's, however, national roasters started to emerge and tried to take over the local markets but they could not fool people who were used to fresh roasts with their new canned coffee; so for awhile they actually put the roast dates right on the can. My favorite is the "Dated Coffee" campaign by Chase and Sanborn in 1933. Anyway, the big change came in WW2. Someone invented that nastiest thing of all called "Instant Coffee" and gave it to all the GI's fighting in the war. After the war, millions of young men came back all nostalgic about the "strong" coffee that helped them through those challenging times. So, by the way did straight up unfiltered ci******es like the "Lucky Strike" ci******es my dad used to love. So, America learned to love and self-medicate using this kind of utterly disgusting stuff but they loved it and felt warm and fuzzy whenever they sloshed it down or took a long drag and puff. The moral of the story is: no matter the facts of history, health or taste, people will develop strong personal attachments to just about anything.
