Freshness is the most important thing for delicious coffee. How to distinguish it?

Freshness is the most important thing for delicious coffee. How to distinguish it? Here are the steps:

Are there enough bubbles when brewing?

Freshly roasted coffee beans contain a lot of gas and have active respiration. During extraction, the gas in the beans is released and what we see are beautiful and plump bubbles. There is a very vivid adjective to describe them: "blooming".

Do the coffee beans have a strong aroma?

The abundance of bubbles is positively correlated with freshness; the fresher the wine, the more bubbles it produces.

To judge the freshness of coffee beans, you should also consider whether the raw beans are fresh.

60% of a good cup of coffee depends on the quality of the raw beans. With the same bean variety, farm, altitude, and planting method, the dry and wet aromas of new and old raw beans are very different.

Fresh coffee beans are called "New Corp", those harvested the year before are called "Old Corp", and those stored for more than a year are called "Old Corp". This distinction is mainly due to the water content of the raw beans, because the water content of new beans is high (usually between 11% and 13%), and the appearance is mostly dark green, while the appearance of old beans (water content 10% to 11%) and old beans (water content 9% to 10%) is lighter green, lighter in weight and texture, and not as shiny and tactile as the surface of new beans. Of course, different processing and refining methods, origins, and varieties of raw beans will be different.

The surface of new beans is shiny , and the moisture content of raw beans will drop below 10%. The color of freshly processed raw beans is blue-green/green, but as time goes by, the color of raw beans will gradually turn into light green, white or yellow. The moisture content of ripe "coffee cherries" is usually between 9% and 13% after being refined by washing or drying. It is not easy to roast if the moisture content is too high or too low. Coffee is the same as fruit, with its seasonal production period, and there are seasonal and out-of-season products.

When the rainy season in the coffee producing area begins is related to the harvest time. The rainy season prompts the coffee trees to bloom and bear fruit, which takes about 6-9 months. When the coffee berries are ripe and turn red, they can be picked and peeled, washed and fermented, semi-washed or sun-dried (the moisture content of shelled beans reaches 12%), and then put into warehouses for ripening for 1-3 months. Finally, the seed shells are ground off and they can be exported.

After the coffee beans are harvested, it takes at least another 2-3 months to complete the tedious post-processing before they can be exported.

From the above, we can see that if coffee bean traders stockpile old goods from the past, the flavor will definitely be different from that of fresh batches of green beans. Green beans that are more than a year old are old and tasteless.

Shops selling specialty coffee often prefer fresher batches. After all, time is terrible and it is unknown how much of the coffee's flavor it will take away. Roasters certainly don't want the green beans they buy to have only 50% of the flavor left. This is like throwing money down the drain.

From the above, we can know that if the raw beans are to be fresh, there must be no mistakes in production, transportation, and storage, otherwise the coffee beans will be suspected of being stale. Therefore, if you are not a professional, don’t buy beans blindly.

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