jaminsky wrote:Very detailed specs for pulling our espresso are always available on our website as well.

I just checked your site for the espresso I tried at five days post roast. Not only do you suggest 8 - 12 days rest, but the thoroughness of your brewing instructions is really helpful, including defining terms for those who aren't familiar with that level of precision.

jaminsky wrote:I can tell you that as we have taken our coffee substantially lighter over the past two years (love it or hate it, this is my doing), we have also noticed that we need to rest/age the coffee longer in order to get the quality of extraction our coffee seems to need to perform best....

Those of you who play with refractometers or tds meters might note that you can achieve the optimal extraction without actually extracting much of the desirable soluble material in the coffee. This can result in high acidity (acidity = good) coffees that should taste of fruit having a slightly under-ripe, possibly sour, or even worse, tomato-y flavor. Tomato is always bad.

Interesting post. Thanks.

Your explanation about why light-roasted coffees need to rest more makes lots of sense, but it hasn't been my experience with light-roasted African coffees from George Howell's Terroir. On the contrary, I find those coffees best 2-5 days after roast, after which they tend to go flat or over-extract and need to be updosed and ground coarser. Can you explain that?

Also, I can't get behind your statement about the refractometer. With my VST refractometer, I find that good flavor balance very closely tracks the optimum extraction yield window of 18%-20%. If the extraction yield is less than that, the balance is too sour and if it's above that, the balance is too bitter. The balance might be slightly sour or bitter towards one end of the optimum range or the other, but not so much that I could support your statement quoted above. The only way I ever taste flavors like that is when the extraction yield is below 18% or there was a flaw in processing the coffee (e.g., fermentation.)

Stumptowns bags are actually still not sealed bags. They simply have a plastic lining. The cards are brilliant though, however I'm pretty sure they dont include any notes about resting or preparation on the bag itself. I believe on our new bags we opted to simply point people to our website where all the detailed brewing instructions can be found (new website also in progress).

Its a difficult dance... The industry standard is usually say drink within a month from roasting if its a sealed bag. Of course, if you ask me, I would say drink from days 6-14. Some people come in and buy bags as gifts and end up waiting weeks before getting into the bag, and now a lot of coffee enthusiasts come in and think its ridiculous that we dont have coffee that was roasted the same day despite the fact that it wont be really tasty for a number of days after roast. Its tricky work to make sure everyone feels like they got the most out of the purchase with such a fragile product, understanding that many different customers have very different relationships with our product.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you that buy our espressos go onto the website to look at the brewing instructions?

drgary wrote:I just checked your site for the espresso I tried at five days post roast. Not only do you suggest 8 - 12 days rest, but the thoroughness of your brewing instructions is really helpful, including defining terms for those who aren't familiar with that level of precision.

Glad you found that. Espresso is easier when you know what to shoot for, no?

Peppersass wrote:Interesting post. Thanks.

Your explanation about why light-roasted coffees need to rest more makes lots of sense, but it hasn't been my experience with light-roasted African coffees from George Howell's Terroir. On the contrary, I find those coffees best 2-5 days after roast, after which they tend to go flat or over-extract and need to be updosed and ground coarser. Can you explain that?

Tricky. You said updosed... Are we talking espresso? My experience with Georges coffee was generally similar. I honestly would say its probably something to do with their roast profile, as I know they pack their coffee within minutes after its roasted to make sure they have as little oxygen in their bags as possible. Do you find that all the GHH coffees behave the same way? I might just ask them for you.

Coffee will pretty much always need to be ground a little bit course as it ages, due to extraction rate rising as there is less CO2 present in the coffee.

Peppersass wrote:Also, I can't get behind your statement about the refractometer.

I think you may have misread me, or I miscommunicated. I always find coffee to be best in the 18-22% window. Always. Well, always assuming that you're not sifting for a superior grind particule distribution or doing some very fancy tricks. I also always like my coffee brewed to a strength between 1.3 and 1.5% tds. This is regardless of age of the coffee. What I was trying to say, is that you can hit those ideal numbers, but not actually have optimal flavor if your coffee is too gassy/fresh, just as you can hit those numbers and not have optimal flavor if your coffee is oxidized and old. The gas will actually interfere with the brewing such that you can get the refractometer to read the liquid at the desired density without knowing whether or not the coffee has in fact rested enough to give you the optimal flavor. Does that make sense?

Peppersass wrote: I find those coffees best 2-5 days after roast, after which they tend to go flat or over-extract and need to be updosed and ground coarser. Can you explain that?

Jenny Howell (qc at GHH Coffee) says that the coffee is good for five days once the bag is open. So, maybe 3-7? It comes down to the roast profile in the end. The way you choose to develop the coffee has quite a big impact on this.

Ben,

I appreciate you stepping into the fray and participating in the thread. I've read your replies with interest and they've been illuminating. I agree with you that tomato notes, like the ones we found in the bag of Ritual's El Naranjo, El Salvador at the meet-up, and ones that I've had on previous occasions are undesirable. The next time I experience this I will be checking roast dates, rest time, and bloom activity to confirm if it's an extraction problem due to gassy coffee.

In your experience, would grinding the coffee 15 or so minutes before using it overcome these extraction problems by hastening the outgassing of the ground coffee before brewing?

jaminsky wrote:...now a lot of coffee enthusiasts come in and think its ridiculous that we dont have coffee that was roasted the same day despite the fact that it wont be really tasty for a number of days after roast. Its tricky work to make sure everyone feels like they got the most out of the purchase with such a fragile product, understanding that many different customers have very different relationships with our product.

I think that this a real opportunity to succeed and fail on delivering on expectations. The coffee that you ship locally, across the country, or sell over the counter all may get to the grinder to be brewed up at different times from roast and even the retail over-the-counter sales can have a big, unknown range of when the coffee will be brewed up. Managing this successfully would really go a long way towards ensuring the best cup for those customers who pay attention to these details.

I recently stopped at a cafe on my way to the SCAA expo and wanted to pick up some coffee to pull as espresso while I was there (I'd forgotten my coffee case in my rush to get on the road). The barista went back to grab me a bag of coffee and mentioned that it was freshly roasted that day. Luckily she mentioned that and was willing to dig through some bags to find me one from a previous batch that had a several more days of rest on it since I was wanting to use the coffee in the coming days.

jaminsky wrote:Just out of curiosity, how many of you that buy our espressos go onto the website to look at the brewing instructions?

I have to admit that since I use home lever machines with 45 and 49 mm baskets, I don't usually check websites for brewing instructions since many times they are aimed at commercial sized baskets, but I may start doing so now if just to check out rest recommendations of coffees.

jaminsky wrote:Tricky. You said updosed... Are we talking espresso? My experience with Georges coffee was generally similar. I honestly would say its probably something to do with their roast profile, as I know they pack their coffee within minutes after its roasted to make sure they have as little oxygen in their bags as possible. Do you find that all the GHH coffees behave the same way? I might just ask them for you.

Yes, I was talking about Terroir espresso roasts. I've generally found all their "Northern Italian" espresso roasts are best within 3-7 days after roast. Sometimes, when I've run out of coffee, I've had to brew the day after roast (Terroir is one day away via UPS.) The coffees are usually pretty good that early, though of course will under-extract a bit. Certainly better than they taste past the window.

I've seen their recommendation that the coffee is best five days after opening the bag. I believe they've also said that the coffee will be good for up to a month in the sealed bag. I think that's generally true for their roasts intended for brewing, which is a more forgiving method, but I don't think it's true for their espresso roasts. I've held sealed bags a couple of weeks and they definitely are past the peak for espresso. I do think they gain time for the sealed bags with their immediate nitrogen-flushed packaging methods and high-quality (though not necessarily eco-friendly) bags.

jaminsky wrote:I think you may have misread me, or I miscommunicated. I always find coffee to be best in the 18-22% window. Always. Well, always assuming that you're not sifting for a superior grind particule distribution or doing some very fancy tricks. I also always like my coffee brewed to a strength between 1.3 and 1.5% tds. This is regardless of age of the coffee. What I was trying to say, is that you can hit those ideal numbers, but not actually have optimal flavor if your coffee is too gassy/fresh, just as you can hit those numbers and not have optimal flavor if your coffee is oxidized and old. The gas will actually interfere with the brewing such that you can get the refractometer to read the liquid at the desired density without knowing whether or not the coffee has in fact rested enough to give you the optimal flavor. Does that make sense?

OK, so we agree on the optimum extraction yield window. But I haven't had the experience you describe with fresh coffee hitting the numbers but not brewing optimally. What happens here is that too-fresh coffee reads below the optimum window, say 17% or less. Makes sense, as the excess CO2 released during brewing isn't allowing full contact between water and grounds. It doesn't seem to be a matter of reduced extraction of certain compounds, but rather reduced extraction of all compounds. With stale coffee, what I tend to see is over-extraction. I prefer a somewhat narrower window, in the 18%-20% range for most coffees, so when they get old and over-extract I see numbers over 20%. That's when I'll increase the dose and grind coarser to reduce the level of extraction. That only makes the coffee tolerable, but it will still taste flatter than coffee in the peak freshness window. I believe by that time the more interesting compounds have escaped from the beans with the last of the CO2 or have broken down.

Ben,

This is such a great opportunity to pick your brain. Thanks for showing up on this thread. Yes, Astro in Detroit has those valve bags. Very cool. I just picked up a pound of this month's Sweet Tooth El Salvador. Roast date is May 14th, just came out of the valve bag yesterday. Smells amazing.

But I could use your help because I am having trouble getting results - blond squirters are abundant over here. Up front, I have to admit I don't know how to count the days past roast. Today being May 19th, would I call that day 5 or day 6? Your recommendations online say to pull between days 6 and 8. Maybe I should wait another day? Specs: La Marzocco Shot Brewer and Versalab grinder. Scace shows my brew temp is 199. Standard (not VST) ridgeless double basket from Espresso Parts. 18 gram dose. I do have the VST basket you recommended, but have generally been afraid to use those. They bite. =-)

I had just come from pulling some Michigan Ugly Mug Burundi @ 200 and it was extracting wonderfully. Switched over to the Sweet Tooth and put it down a degree. Immediately starts extracting blond from the basket, with blond squirters that develop. Then, it becomes a mix of darker oils and blond streaks. Results in the cup are thin and greasy. Tried going to 201 and got possibly worse blond squirters. Definitely not a good extraction, if you could even call it an extraction. I can't tell if I need to grind finer because it immediately blonds, but then the darker good stuff comes out at possibly the right rate. Difficult! I do not have channeling issues with any other coffee I am pulling. The Versalab's distribution is wonderful and I am using the same redistribution technique that gets me awesome results with other beans.

Looking forward to learning from you how to pull this. I have a lot of the Sweet Tooth left to play with. I have previously not been able to get results at home with Ritual, but Astro has shown me with the 9 Darling that amazing results are out there.

Thanks in advance!