OldNuc wrote:Almico:
You may find this thread informative. 2 month old Kimbo from Italy produces great espresso. I'm confused!

The term Stale Whole Bean Coffee requires definition to have any meaning.

Ok... Time to restate our objective here...?

Objective restated: Instead of "which is preferred, stale coffee of consistent grind, or stale coffee "freshly", but inconsistently ground", how about which is worse?

I've been roasting a lot of coffee lately, much more than I will ever be able to drink. So I've been spreading the love and giving it away to friends and coworkers. But most of these people do not have $300-$1500 grinders.

So the purpose of my question is: do I give it away in bean form and let them grind it in their Nutri-Bullets, or properly grind it myself and risk it getting staler faster?

I believe this dead horse was beaten to a fine puree on another mailing list and the consensus was to pass out roasted beans with instructions to store in air tight container in freezer. Grind with whatever is at hand and consume for best results. I have consumed right good coffee ground with an antique Universal Coffee grinder.

Increasing the surface area increases the oxidation rate.

Almico wrote:Objective restated: Instead of "which is preferred, stale coffee of consistent grind, or stale coffee "freshly", but inconsistently ground", how about which is worse?

I've been roasting a lot of coffee lately, much more than I will ever be able to drink. So I've been spreading the love and giving it away to friends and coworkers. But most of these people do not have $300-$1500 grinders.

So the purpose of my question is: do I give it away in bean form and let them grind it in their Nutri-Bullets, or properly grind it myself and risk it getting staler faster?

First, good on you for spreading the wealth, and probably giving these folks fresher, higher quality beans or ground coffee than they will every buy!

What I mean, most of these folks are probably accustomed to buying *MONTHS* old Starbucks at the grocery store. (if they are anything resembling 99.99% of the average coffee consumer - sorry, we are in the minority here on HB). Before I had a clue, I would wait until the grocery store coffee was on sale, and close to expiration - guaranteeing it was months old!

So, if you do grind it for them, and give it to them freshly ground - or even as beans for that matter - and they take a month to drink it, aren't they still one up and will have better coffee?

Too much knowledge is a bad thing. Give it to them in the form they prefer, tell them it is fresher than the crap they are currently buying, and take stock in the fact you did a good thing and gave them better quality than they are probably already buying.

Now you are going to tell me that your friends are actually coffee snobs and know the difference - so in that case I would say tell them to buy their own damn grinders and roast their own coffee!

Just one perspective.

PS - to supplement above, nothing wrong with also giving tips on keeping it fresh - aka seal it in air tight jars, freeze what might not be used, etc.

I pre-grind coffee for the break room and friends on a Mahlkonig; grind consistency does matter and they love the smell.

Stale coffee is still stale, no matter how/when it's ground, but to answer your question, I think an open can of Maxwell House is totally non drinkable. Those stale Colombian beans you get out of the super market bins and grind yourself as needed, while by no means a good cup of coffee, if you are used to fresh roast, but at least they are lot more drinkable than what came out of the can.

Personally, I would just drink water if I had to drink either one.

The reason I say this is because my wife used to drink MH before I got into drinking coffee and roasting my own. I guess that's why I was in my 50's before I started drinking the stuff.

SpaceTime wrote:That's easy - train.

I agree. For dramatic effect and making the news, definitely a train.

Almico wrote: ....
But after using my Pharos and uncovering the huge difference that a good grind can make to a brew, it just made me wonder which is better, good grind with pre-ground shelf coffee or poor grind with shelf beans and ground "fresh".

In other words given equally stale coffee, which is better a good, old grind or a fresh poor grind?

Granted, neither are desirable. I'm just curious.

Considering that a perfectly sized and shaped stale coffee particles will extract better than stale beans ground with a lesser quality grinder, you should be able to taste the full spectrum of the stale coffee. I'm afraid that with a less than perfect grind you will miss some of the stale notes and your overall experience will not be as staley as with the perfectly ground stale beans, resulting in disappointment.

hankua wrote:I pre-grind coffee for the break room and friends on a Mahlkonig; grind consistency does matter and they love the smell.

I agree, and that is the thrust of my query. Coffee ground on a whirly-whacker, with its combination of dust, boulders and everything in between, hardly has any chance of getting a clean brew extraction. Heck, I even notice a huge difference from my Baratza Preciso and the Pharos. So while the coffee might be a bit fresher when ground at brew time, it will still be partly over and partly under extracted.

I think I will take one for the team. I'm going to Pharos grind some recently roasted Colombian, seal it and put it away for a few weeks. Along side it I'll seal some unground beans from the same batch. When the time comes I'll pulverize the beans and brew both and see what I think.

I'll stash enough away to repeat again in a couple of months.

I thought you were asking about "ground coffee". I have never and never will consider one of those mini blenders a "coffee grinder". They might advertise and be sold as one, but I've never seen on part of those blade that looked as though they would grind.

You and I don't, but about a billion other people do.