Marshall wrote:If we could pause a moment from genuflecting before the Freshness God, could you describe how these beans performed in the cup and how they disappointed you?

This and the subsequent posts are nonsense. The cafe is not resting the beans for their own espresso; they are selling out their old roasts before they sell the new ones. Presumably they will do this like a supermarket, first in, first out, regardless of how old the coffee is or how it tastes.

They do not know by what method, or with what equipment their customers make the coffee, so the resting talk is mendacious. Imagine Counterculture or Intelly say that they won't sell any coffee until it is as old as when they started using their shop espresso blends. It doesn't even work as a line of bull.

The "how does it taste" argument seems even sillier. To me, it suggests a Monty Python style sketch:

"Excuse me, I asked for a pound of flour, and you sold me a loaf of bread"
-- "But it's cracking good bread, isn't sir."
"I wouldn't know; I needed flour"
-- "But I was saving you time, sir. Now you don't have to bake the bread yourself."
"But I need the flour for pancakes."
-- "Have you ever had breadcrumb pancakes, very yummy, sir"

You are merging several people's views into one straw man that you can ridicule. I have no idea what this shop's "discard by" date is, and neither do you. I have no idea whether they have a theory of the ideal resting period, and neither do you.

All we know is that this is a small business that manages their inventory by not selling their most recent roast.

This economy has been very hard on both indie shops and large chains. SCAA's membership is down by 8% this year (per a Ric Rhinehart interview). No retailer can afford waste. The O.P. was happy with the shop's beans until he found out the roast date. So, it is particularly reckless to effectively charge them with fraud for failing to maintain an elite standard of freshness.

If a consumer demands that his or her coffee be roasted within a day or two of sale, that's fine. Many roasters will do just that. Take your business to them, and pay the shipping cost. I often do that. But, it isn't necessary to defame the local shop on the Internet for failing to do the same.

This is a specialty cafe/roaster in the business of selling fresh coffee. The shop makes it very clear to its customers that they roast on the premises, and that they roast each coffee once a week. This implies that the coffee being sold was roasted this week. If they don't sell out the previous week's stock; that coffee should be discarded or sold as last week's stock at a discount. Anything else is deliberately misleading.

For instance, suppose a bakery advertises that it bakes fresh bread every morning, but actually sells out yesterday's bread before selling the fresh bread. Would you regard that as an honest business practice?

The SCAA and its members are facing hard times; but defending practices like this makes matters worse. The SCAA is not a regular industry association, and cannot become one. The NCA is the regular industry association; the SCAA is the Not-NCA, existing for companies determined to make better, fresher, and more transparent coffee. Pleading hard luck when selling old coffee, or worse yet, that it tastes just as good to its customers, is par for the course for the NCA, but plain suicide for the SCAA. If the stuff from last week, lying around in the open bins, really tastes just as good as the fresh roasted, there is no need for the SCAA to exist.

another_jim wrote:For instance, suppose a bakery advertises that it bakes fresh bread every morning, but actually sells out yesterday's bread before selling the fresh bread. Would you regard that as an honest business practice?

Day-old bread without preservatives is stale, no ifs, ands or buts. Staleness standards for coffee are much more debatable, even at the elite, artisan end of the industry (where they are, in fact, debated all the time).

The roaster I frequent in Philly puts all the coffee in sealed valve bags with the roast date on the bag. Bins are, as a general rule, bad. The coffee dies a quick death in those bins. When I go to the roaster I look for bags that have a few days on them (about 5) that way I can dump them in the grinder and have at it.

Every blend is different and ages differently. I have had some that were at their best after a week, others that were best at 2-3 days. As long as I enjoy the coffee, I dont worry to much about it. That is not to say I would purchase a bag of coffee that has been sitting on a shelf for a month. Having said that, being lied to, constantly, would be a quick way to lose my business.

I am probably by now the most freshness liberal person in all coffee forums je je and I have to defend my title. I remember my Target days when I bought coffee from metal square cans (supposedly the most special and expensive). I used to enjoy it because my Chucky internal voice hadn't developed yet. I was happy with just trying different things. After a while, Chucky grew on me and whenever I entered into a coffee store I judged everything and was very critical. The store didn't know that I was a home made expert jeje. I remember I used to say to my friend that "this is not good espresso, it can be a lot better" "those beans are stale" jeje. Chucky wanted to be recognized in his new conquered territory and one way to do so was to show discomfort and judge negatively. Chucky was me back then jeje.

Enjoy your body, drink espresso

All we know is that this is a small business that manages their inventory by not selling their most recent roast.

We also know that an enthusiastic espresso maker was frequenting his local coffee roaster on a regular basis, the business advertised how often they roasted coffee, but this did not necessarily coincide with the beans they were selling necessarily. A local buyer was happy buy fresh beans and tip for considerate, custom service. If this customer came in once a week to buy a pound of beans, that is a lot of money—and perhaps he would recommend other buyers.

Let's take a hypothetical case, but I can relate to the quest. Does the older coffee in the bins make a great shot? As good as the new stuff out back? Not telling! Let's offend the customer, who might be one of those fetishists for freshness thanks to the power of the Internet, and tell him he has to buy the old stuff, has been in fact doing so for weeks. But this is really an unnecessarily inflexible position, and misses an opportunity for communication. Perhaps a flexible business would have capitalized on this buyer's enthusiasm and seen this as evidence of his value to the business—recognized a quest for freshness for what it probably is, a quest for excellence—then buyer might be happy to buy at this roast house! Instead, "You must buy the old beans. You can buy the freshly roasted stuff next week. Of course, then it will be old beans, again."

If the beans in the bin were still great at making espresso, and they for sure might be depending on the types of beans and how they were roasted, why not pull a sample brew on the spot to check it out? Perhaps a comparison with the new stuff to taste the difference—taste test! Assuming the older beans taste great, perhaps even better because this particular blend has peaked with the proper rest, the customer will now demand the rested beans from the bin. Now we have a shop that is exploring the pursuit of taste with the customer, on a journey of excellence together.

To me this issue has more to do with smart retailing practices and less to do with coffee. In reality the customer is not always right but if the retailer does what is necessary within reason to satisfy the extra requests of a particular customer.... that kindness is often returned with intense loyalty and excellent word of mouth referral advertising (the best kind of advertising and free of charge).

When I was roasting for a local cafe - which I did until this past January - a handful of regular whole bean buyers would actually stop in when I was working and ask which beans I had just roasted or would be roasting in the next few days. We ALWAYS ensured that they got the freshest beans available. And the remaining many hundreds of pounds we roasted every week went to other customers, making drinks in the cafe or to wholesale orders.

A well organized roaster or cafe operator will rarely have much inventory that sits beyond 5 to 7 days unless they have a particular espresso blend requiring that much rest before it reaches optimal state.

As a consumer I have the right to ask for the freshest product and if the retailer refuses I can go elsewhere - the beauty of the free market system (when it's working correctly!).

another_jim wrote:This and the subsequent posts are nonsense. The cafe is not resting the beans for their own espresso; they are selling out their old roasts before they sell the new ones. Presumably they will do this like a supermarket, first in, first out, regardless of how old the coffee is or how it tastes.

Agreed.

* * * * *

Phaelon56 wrote:To me this issue has more to do with smart retailing practices and less to do with coffee. In reality the customer is not always right but if the retailer does what is necessary within reason to satisfy the extra requests of a particular customer.... that kindness is often returned with intense loyalty and excellent word of mouth referral advertising (the best kind of advertising and free of charge).

IF the facts are accurately related here by the OP, there's no doubt in my mind that a) the retailer is "rotating stocks" as Jim describes above. OTOH, I also have no doubt that the retailer's employee could have/should have handled the situation better.

* * * * *

If I go to (e.g.) Espresso Vivace and buy coffee at their café, I am buying a sealed bag off the shelf. It will carry the roast date, but I honestly don't know what that date will be of the top of my head (and can't easily check, as they are 800+ miles from me), but I would assume they "rotate" their inventory. If I order the coffee online, it is shipped the same day it's roasted -- am I going to buy coffee at Vivace on the same day it's roasted? I think not. Is it conceivable that the coffee I received a few days ago (ordered/roasted on 6/25; received on 6/27) is "fresher" than what I would get in their café if I walked in last Saturday (6/27)? Absolutely! But I wouldn't expect it to be "stale" . . .

Cheers,
Jason

Leaving aside the Monty Python approach, which I suspect might be much more fun..... the issue here, it seems to me, is simply one of honesty. If you know the roasting day really is X because you have been told the truth then you can make your own informed choice about whether you want let the beans rest for your preferred x days for those particular beans and your chosen brewing method/s, or freeze them, or use them before day x or feed them to your magic goose or whatever. If you don't know how long they have been in the front of the shop, at the bottom of the bin (bin!) or whatever then you are stumped and either "enjoy" the variable or go somewhere else.

I'd go somewhere else.

The same goes for roasters who push beans that turn out not to be as described, or buy in great beans but are very hit and miss in their roasting.

In my experience the coffee renaissance has produced some great specialists and a fair number of exquisitely pretentious overclaimers and incompetents.

Why doesn't the roaster skip roasting one week to "catch" up?

Marvin

Or roast less at a time?

Why doesn't the roaster skip roasting one week to "catch" up?

Or roast less at a time?

How do you plan -- especially in this economy -- how many pounds you'll need "next week"? The number is constantly changing.

Your personal consumption and mine may remain relatively constant, but -- you know --

• there's that business trip out of town next week, I'll buy more coffee next week;
• there's that new roaster on the other side of town, but since I'm here, I'll try some of their beans this week;
• the family is going on vacation for two weeks, I' have to remember to get fresh beans when we return;
• oh yeah, I wanted to try that roaster from the internet that was recommended to me (and perhaps you switch permanently).

and so on -- there are dozens of reasons why the amount of coffee roasted does not equal the amount of coffee sold . . . including the business in the café is down because people aren't spending the extra $3 for their afternoon lattè, or having the free brewed coffee from the break room in the office . . .

I'm not saying it isn't impossible to roast less or to skip roasting entirely for a week, if that's what one needs to do to balance inventories. I'm just saying the "art" of predicting future sales demand isn't an easy one.

Cheers,
Jason

I did a little research, for this particular cafe (bean hollow OP was talking about) this is may be the actual reason --> http://adamfeldman.typepad.com/adamfeld ... offee.html

Jason, I think you're being too kind. The microvariables you list may be unpredictable, but overall things should be steadier from week to week. And if the roasted beans start running low, well, then, they could roast some more. Plenty of others manage to. But the fact of the matter is that they are roasting when they still have old stock.... they could wait before roasting more.

This roaster is simply not meeting demand and the staff know this is the case, otherwise they wouldn't have lied. And the bins vs. sealed bags point made earlier also holds. The situation is just a mess. No wonder their business is down.

Here is my first of two or three followup posts:

I want to cafeorinico (an online retailer I happen to live near) and picked up the four pounds they roasted for me today. As I stand in my kitchen and inhale near the as yet unopened, sealed packages the fresh coffee aroma is extremely thick and delicious.

A point of comparison to the local cafe: I would do the same with the bag I got as I walked out of the shop and only could smell the paper bag it came in.

So checkmark for better aroma (I assume due to freshness but could also be bean or roast quality).

I plan to double freezer-bag and freeze most of this since the warehouse is not on my way home from work and they keep normal business hours.

I will post again after I brew.

michaelbenis wrote:Jason, I think you're being too kind.

Of course I am! But the main point is that what may seem "obvious" at first glance isn't always so . . .

Happy "Aren't-You-Glad-To-Be-Rid-Of-The-Colonies?" Day, Michael -- I'll have some Abbot Ale from Greene King to celebrate.

I had previously reported regarding a roastery that wouldn't retrieve beans which had just been roasted, instead selling me what was in the bins, and had presumably been there for about a week.

The roaster for this cafe saw a facebook post I had made with the same criticisms and has assured me that the bins are empty on roasting day and are subsequently filled with the fresh beans. She also sent me a message today advising that, if I went to buy the beans today, I should tell the staff that she wanted them to retrieve beans from the "reserve bin" since the regular bins were not yet completely emptied of last weeks stock (probably because we got about 40" of snow in a week).

The cafe is "Bean Hollow" in Ellicott City, MD, and I am greatly encouraged to have this contact with the roaster and some confidence that they take my interests seriously. Since I had reported the "bad news" I wanted to follow up with the new information.

(PS since the big snow storm I have been forced to brew espresso with Dunkin Donuts beans. It was not tasty at all, and even when using it in cappuccino the poor taste came through. I can't wait to go to Bean Hollow tomorrow!)

Like the OP, I, too, would be less than pleased with being lied to by the shop/roaster. But then, I am not pleased with being lied to by anyone. Really, who is?
I think it correct for him to simply take his business elsewhere and think he has done the members of the HB community a service by reporting on this shop's less-than-truthful practices.

Len