Phaelon56 wrote:When I buy beans week in and week out all year long and my cost is jumping by $3 to $5 per pound because of higher shipping costs - it matters to me and it's completely unrelated to how much I spend on espresso gear or other equipment. Just curious - as long as the topic is under discussion.... what do you folks consider to be realistic shipping costs assuming the beans are comparably priced between different vendors and of comparable quality? (albeit different flavor profiles).

Good question! Hope you don't mind, I've split this to a separate topic What are reasonable shipping costs for roasted coffee?

malachi wrote:
If the coffee is truly 4 months old, then if you find it merely "hum drum" and not in fact "awful and disgusting" than it is truly a special coffee.

Chris,

Hyperbole aside, do you find this to really be true?

I do drink 4 month old coffee from time to time, but only if it was frozen immediately after roasting and kept in a very cold chest freezer. But of course, this is not what we are talking about here.

I have very little experience drinking stale coffee, however the experience that I have is that if the coffee was decent to begin with, e.g. not poor quality over-roasted beans, that after a few weeks it loses all of its defining characteristics and begins to taste like Coffee, N.O.S. (not otherwise specified). Mind you, I don't like coffee, n.o.s., but I don't necessarily find it offensive or disgusting, either. If you ever order coffee out at an unknown bar or restaurant, 4 month old coffee, n.o.s., is about the best you could ever hope to receive. I generally don't order coffee in restaurants, nor do I visit unknown bars except when forced, but I don't think that when well prepared such coffee is either disgusting or, for that matter, undrinkable, even if I'd much rather drink something else.

ken

To continue the thread hijack in hopes that it will be split...

Counter Culture mistakenly shipped me 8 oz of Grand Reserve (from Aida's farm in El Salvador). It came packed in the tin that was supposed to contain the Finca Mauritania Cascara (dried fruit of the coffee cherry that you steep as tea).

Anyway, this coffee normally sells for $60 / lb. Sadly, when I received it, it had been roasted 1 month ago.

I have to say, I have been brewing this coffee on the Abid Clever and it's a really nice cup, bursting with citrus. Too bad I didn't get to taste it at the peak of freshness, but even at a month old, there are no off-tastes, no unpleasant "staleness" -- yet I'm sure it has lost nuance and sweetness due to age.

Based on this, I believe a great coffee, roasted lightly with no surface oils, can still do okay as a brewed coffee, even outside of the window we call "fresh" around here.

People are quick to condemn coffee as "stale", but this has more to do with the physics of espresso extraction than the coffee itself. 1-month-old coffee isn't necessarily "stale," especially if it has been protected from oxygen in a one-way bag. It just doesn't extract the same way as the 4-10 day old coffees we typically pull shots with.

wgbennett83 wrote:I've been considering making the trip to Chicago and attending their course. How was it?

Right off the bat I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the training session. Second, I'm sorry for the delayed response as I didn't see this post till now.

Outside of using an Aeropress and some locally roasted beans, I'm very new to specialty coffee and especially espresso. I found value in the session for just having the ability to pull some shots in front of someone with experience and also the ability to bounce my curious questions. (Todd, the instructor, did say that they offer more intermediate and advanced training sessions.) My class didn't have any WBC contenders so we focused on some of the basics.

The training session had about 5 people in it and was taught by one of Intelligentsia's instructors. I missed the roasting session due to prior engagements and I'm kicking myself because that would have been fascinating not only in terms of roasting but the Black Cat blend, itself. The class covered grinding, tamping, pulling shots, and stretching milk. It took all of the three hours and the hands-on time was worth the price of admission. We used a Nuova WBC machine but they had a Silvia and E61 ready for use. At the end, he showed us a MyPressi that had just been delivered and pulled a shot with it. We left with a freshly roasted bag in hand of Black Cat.

Sorry for my wordy reply... hopefully for posterity's sake, this will help convince someone to take the training session.