The biggest misunderstanding in coffee consumption: Is freshly ground coffee fresh coffee?

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As consumption upgrades further, consumers are becoming more mature and more picky. Quality has replaced price as the most important factor for some consumers. Consumers are becoming more and more demanding on the freshness of food. Juices need to be freshly squeezed, bread needs to be freshly baked, and coffee needs to be freshly ground. In order to distinguish between traditional instant coffee, ready-to-drink coffee and other pre-made coffee products, the convenience store coffee and takeaway coffee that can be seen on the streets are almost all "freshly ground coffee". Overnight, "freshly ground" seems to have become synonymous with "fresh" and "high quality".

But does freshly ground coffee really mean fresh coffee? Does freshly ground coffee really mean high-quality coffee?

Many people know that coffee is also a food ingredient that needs to be properly stored and used fresh. Not only does stale coffee taste bland, but if it is not stored well, it can even produce ochratoxins, which are harmful to human health. From the instant coffee of the first wave of coffee craze, the Italian coffee of the second wave of coffee craze, to the boutique coffee of the third wave of coffee craze, people are paying more and more attention to the quality of coffee, and a key factor of quality is "freshness".

But what exactly is fresh coffee? Fresh beans, fresh roasted or fresh ground?

Compared with instant coffee and ready-to-drink coffee in supermarkets, the "freshly ground coffee" advertised by some businesses can be called freshly brewed coffee. But does this "freshness" only refer to the production process, or the coffee itself? Is "freshly ground coffee" fresh green beans + freshly roasted + freshly ground coffee beans, or is it just unknown production season + unknown roasting time + freshly ground coffee beans? This is probably the most mysterious and tacit trick in the coffee industry.

Coffee bean types and shelf life:

* Unroasted green coffee beans 1-2 years

* Roasted coffee beans (for espresso) for about 3 weeks

* Roasted coffee beans (other than Espresso) 30-45 days

* Ground coffee beans: 5-10 minutes

※ Coffee beans must be stored in a good environment to have the above lifespan.

The shelf life data comes from "Coffee Appreciation"

Coffee beans are fruit seeds, and there are multiple layers of pulp outside the seeds. Although the pulp can be eaten, it is not commonly used. Usually, coffee seeds are processed, roasted, and ground to get the coffee we drink. These three levels represent different levels of "freshness":

1. Fresh green beans

Coffee is an agricultural crop. Coffee beans are processed from the seeds of the fruit, so the freshness of the raw beans will deeply affect the flavor of the coffee. It is generally believed that only coffee beans produced in the season are fresh and will taste better.

Once coffee is harvested and processed, the best tasting period for green beans is about one year if they are well stored. As the storage time increases, the moisture content of the coffee beans will decrease, making the coffee beans tasteless (except for aged beans and cellared beans). The flavor of green beans is also affected by external humidity and odor.

Usually, the main harvest season for coffee producing areas in the northern hemisphere is from October to March. Usually, red cherries that can be harvested will appear sporadically in early October, but the yield is not high. November to January is usually the peak season. Therefore, the harvest basically spans the year. Green bean traders often mark '2018/2019' or "18-19" to tell you which season it is. Some people wonder whether it is 18 or 19 and can't tell the difference. Now you should know why it is marked like this! It means that this is the season of harvest from the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2019 (it is the season, not the batch).

So if the coffee cherries harvested in November are processed and dried for 2-4 weeks, and are not left at the place of origin for sale, they are directly shipped, and after about a month of sea transportation, shipping schedule, and customs clearance, if everything goes well, they can be seen in China as early as early January (but due to different national conditions, it usually takes longer).

Well-preserved fresh green beans are the basic requirement for a good cup of coffee. In order to control the stability of quality and avoid the impact of international futures prices, some large chain companies may stockpile large batches of seasonal green beans at one time, but when to clear the inventory and when to change the production season is probably a commercial confidential information. If you use coffee beans of unknown production season for roasting, grinding and brewing... Sorry, that is absolutely not fresh and high quality.

2. Fresh Baking

The shelf life of roasted coffee beans is much shorter than that of green beans.

There are two simple ways to measure the freshness of coffee. The first is to measure it through aroma, which is one of the most important elements of specialty coffee. If you use aroma as a criterion, you will find that the aroma will disappear within a few days, or even just one day. So if you only think about the aroma, then it can be said that the coffee is not fresh within one day. However, freshly roasted coffee is not suitable for direct drinking, because coffee beans will emit a lot of carbon dioxide, resulting in the lack of flavor of coffee beans. Depending on the degree of roasting, coffee should be brewed at least three days after roasting.

There is another metric: through CO2. Because both aroma and CO2 are produced during roasting, they start ticking like a clock immediately after roasting. From the perspective of CO2, the question of freshness is more complicated, because too much gas will affect the extraction during the brewing process, but try not to store it for more than a month.

When buying roasted coffee beans, please look at the "roasting date" rather than the "shelf life" . If the package does not have a date, it may be that the coffee beans have been stored for a while. Due to material replenishment, inventory, logistics and other reasons, some chain stores use "freshly ground" coffee beans that are one or two months past the roasting date when they arrive at the store. If it is shipped internationally across the sea...

※A bean bag without a roasting date may not be a good sign

3. Fresh Grind

After grinding coffee, it will produce a lot of aroma, which is why you must grind the beans before brewing coffee. These aromas will form the charming flavor of coffee. In order to grasp this good flavor, you must seize the golden time of 5-10 minutes after grinding and use the coffee powder to brew, otherwise it will be a waste of the aroma and flavor of the coffee.

Thanks to the unremitting efforts of large-scale businesses to promote the concept of "freshly ground", it has become common knowledge in the coffee industry and among coffee lovers. Therefore, it is used as a selling point to promote "quality-oriented" and "professionally made" coffee.

However, as the saying goes, “Thirty years in the east, thirty years in the west.” The latest opinion in the coffee circle is that “pre-ground coffee may be better than freshly ground coffee!”

at last

Currently, coffee brands on the market are vigorously promoting "freshly ground coffee", but they keep silent about the production season and roasting time of the coffee beans used. This is because many brands of coffee beans are purchased and roasted abroad, and it takes 3-4 months to be shipped to China, not to mention the time it takes to be shipped from the port to each store, which greatly exceeds the best tasting period of coffee beans. Even for domestically roasted coffee brands, if their own inventory and logistics systems are not perfect, the larger the scale, the more likely this situation will occur.

I am afraid that many consumers who love coffee and pursue coffee quality have been misled by the term "freshly ground coffee". Everyone thinks that they are drinking very fresh coffee. After all, the coffee is made by the barista, but brewing coffee is only a process, not the beginning. If you want to drink a cup of fresh coffee, the production season of the coffee beans and the time after the coffee beans are roasted are also crucial. Don't mistake freshness again!

【Recommended reading】：

Freshness of green coffee beans | What are new beans, old beans, aged beans, and aged beans?

Pre-ground coffee may be better than freshly ground coffee!

Do you really know what fresh coffee means? How can coffee be considered fresh?

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