The Biggest Change You'll Make
Step 5 – Upgrading Your Brew With Fresh Coffee
You can find a frozen pizza that tastes really darn good – but it’s still no match to a fresh pizza right out of the oven.
Coffee is the same.
And for you, it’s all going to start with buying freshly roasted coffee and grinding it at home yourself.
You can't further your Coffee Connoisseur journey without taking this step.
Whether you implement this step or not, understanding coffee freshness is key.
This is the next big step for you to take on your journey towards becoming a coffee connoisseur.
To explain why, a little bit of sciencey stuff:
Coffee is an incredibly volatile substance.
It’s made up of an almost incomprehensible amount of delicate taste and aroma compounds which are responsible for giving us these amazing experiences.
These compounds are far more stable in the coffee’s unroasted form…
But also impossible to extract with water.
And that’s why we roast coffee.
That process makes it possible to run hot water through coffee and remove the delicious taste and aroma compounds into our cup.
That process also accelerates, to an incredible degree, the rate at which these compounds disappear.
Even after the roasting process is finished, the coffee continues to change – and it never stops.
It’s giving off gasses, and the compounds inside are deteriorating as well.
It’s often said that the height of roasted coffees taste freshness is between 4-14 days after roasting the coffee.
Two very important points now:
First, don't stress about that time period. Good quality coffee is going to be delicious even outside of that period.
Second, only buy coffee that has a ‘roasted on' date printed/stamped on the packaging. Many roasters do not include a ‘roasted on' date but instead show you an ‘enjoy by' date, which is relatively meaningless.
Look for ‘roasted on' and then if you can, get coffees that were roasted within a week of purchasing.
Once you grind your coffee, everything accelerates such that even just an hour after your coffee is ground, the taste will be very noticeably changed.
What you lose is what I like to call vibrancy.
It’s the vibrancy of freshness, and that’s why I like using the frozen – fresh food comparison.
Both can be good.
And honestly, pre-ground coffee which is produced on the farm to a high quality, and roasted well, is still going to taste delicious…
You will just be missing out on an incredible degree of vibrancy.
There is no way around it – you must grind your own coffee at home, in order to get the most out of your brewed coffee.
Get one of my recommended Coffee Grinders
Electric (top recommended):
Baratza Encore
Oxo Barista
Manual (top recommended):
Hario Mini
Porlex
In the next segment, I'll give you my best guidelines for storing your coffee.