"Coffee Encyclopedia" teaches you how to distinguish good and bad coffee beans

Click to follow | Daily boutique coffee culture magazine

For coffee industry exchanges, please add private

Private WeChat Qianjie Coffee , WeChat ID:

(Press and hold to copy)

IMAKECOFFEE

Most people don’t have much time to come into contact with coffee. It is very rare to be able to identify the type of coffee from the coffee beans. Even if you are lucky enough to know coffee, you may not have experienced all the processes from coffee beans to liquid. There are good and bad coffees, so how do we identify them?

1. Microclimate of coffee bean growing area

Coffee comes in many shapes and sizes, and while most are the same, specific varieties are best grown for different local microclimates. The best farmers adapt to local conditions.

2. Picking time

At the end of the harvest season, coffee beans are picked before they are fully ripe in preparation for the next season. Most of these coffee beans are classified as bad varieties called "subgrade" because they are not ideal.

3. Do you want to highlight the ideal characteristics or cover up the defects during baking?

Don’t say that any roaster, or even just any person, can produce a dry, grey, dull coffee. This is a way to cover up flaws, and producing more complex fruity or caramel flavors requires high-quality coffee beans and attention to detail.

4. Carefulness during drying

Once the beans are picked, there are a few different ways to dry out the moisture in the beans, the simplest being to leave them outside in the sun for a few weeks, or using an expensive dryer. High-quality beans are tested to make sure they don’t get moldy, while lower-quality beans are left unattended in the sun because the labor costs are too high.

5. Is the coffee cooled with water?

In large coffee roasters, too many beans are roasted at once, so it is impossible to use air to cool the beans, and water mist needs to be sprayed quickly inside. Although there is no clear data, many roasters believe that: although the water evaporates quickly, if the water contacts the coffee beans, it will reduce the overall quality.

6. The amount of coffee purchased by the roaster

At the farm level, quality and quantity are directly related. There is simply not enough high-quality coffee in the world to meet the needs of large roasters. Small companies can buy 5-10 bags, and other high-quality coffees for limited or small-scale operations, but these quantities are not even close to the amount of a batch of orders from large roasters. Once a roaster reaches a certain scale, their ability to provide high-quality coffee is greatly reduced.

7. Storage time

If the coffee beans used by the coffee shop come from a good local roaster, they are within a week, which ensures freshness. Different from the coffee beans from big brands but of low quality.

8. Quality or quantity?

In the quest for scale, many manufacturers end up sacrificing quality for quantity. When roasting 2 million pounds of coffee beans a week, there’s no time to pay attention to details.

9. Analysis of coffee aroma

The aroma is what makes coffee special, and while professional roasters often think that taking taste notes is silly, if a company uses blanket terms like “smooth” or “blod,” it shows that they’re not paying attention to the more subtle characteristics.

Freshness is the life of coffee. The best drinking period of roasted coffee beans is within 45 days, while the best drinking period of ground coffee powder is only within 30 days. How to determine the freshness of coffee beans?

There are three steps: smell, look, peel:

Smell: Bring the coffee beans close to your nose and take a deep sniff. Can you clearly smell the aroma of the coffee beans? If so, it means the coffee beans are fresh enough. On the contrary, if the aroma is weak or begins to have a greasy smell, it means that the coffee beans are no longer fresh.

Look: Spread the coffee beans on your hand to determine the origin and variety of the coffee beans, and also to determine whether the coffee beans are roasted evenly.

Peeling: Take a coffee bean and try to peel it with your hands. If the coffee bean is fresh, it should be easy to peel it with a crisp sound and feeling. If the coffee bean is not fresh, you will find that it seems to take a lot of effort to peel a bean.

What is the relationship between coffee bean oil production and the freshness of coffee beans?

Should we buy coffee beans that have “oil” or “no oil” on the surface?

Have you ever seen coffee beans with an oily surface? Why do some coffee beans have an oily surface, while others are "dry and comfortable" without any oil or greasiness? What is the relationship between the "oiliness" of coffee beans and their freshness? Should we buy coffee beans with "oiliness" or "no oiliness" on the surface?

Coffee oil is not oil

These "oils" evenly distributed on the surface of coffee beans are actually not "grease", but a water-soluble organic substance that looks like grease. "Coffee oil" itself contains many coffee aromatic components and can be dissolved in water, so the surface of your brewed coffee will not be covered with a layer of greasy grease.

2 reasons for "oil beans"

There are two reasons for "oily beans". a) Stale lightly roasted beans b) Fresh darkly roasted beans. Let's discuss this in depth.

a) Stale lightly roasted beans

"Light roasted beans" are roasted at a lighter temperature and have a light brown appearance. After roasting, they are dry and do not produce oil. About five days after being roasted (it may be shortened to one or two days in the hot summer), they begin to produce "spotted oil" (dots of oil appear on one side of the coffee beans). Please note: a small amount of "spotted oil" does not mean that they are not fresh. Sometimes it is the peak state of the flavor of light roasted coffee beans. Continue to place them for more than two weeks after being roasted. A layer of uniform, thin and shiny oil will gradually appear on the surface of the light roasted beans. The smell is not sweet, but has a smell of oil. At this time, the flavor of "light roasted beans" has gone downhill and should be avoided.

b) Fresh dark roasted beans

Dark roasted beans, which are roasted at a deeper temperature and have a dark brown appearance, will have a slightly oily appearance after roasting, and will begin to "produce oil" on the surface from the first to the second day after being roasted. Dark roasted beans with a shiny appearance do not mean they are not fresh. On the contrary, the oily appearance of dark roasted beans will gradually dry up three weeks after being roasted, and finally become dry and stale beans. Therefore, if you see coffee beans that are dry and not oily, but have a dark brown appearance, please pay special attention to whether they are marked with the roasting date, as they are most likely stale beans that have gone bad.

Disclaimer: The article comes from the Internet. For some content on the website, such as pictures, we will respect the copyright of the original work and indicate the source. However, due to the large number of pictures, some pictures and texts may not be indicated in time. Please forgive us. If the original author has any disputes, please contact the website to deal with it. Once verified, we will correct it immediately. It is edited by "Coffee Workshop". Please indicate the source when reprinting. This article is intended to spread coffee culture. If there is any infringement, please inform us to delete it. Thank you~!

For more professional coffee exchanges, please scan the QR code and follow WeChat: IMAKECOFFEE

Front Street Cafe | No. 10 Baoanqian Street, Dalu Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou