So I got back from vacation and my beans are stale. Its an interesting experiment, because I've never drank three week old Monsooned Malabar before. Lets just say it doesn't hold up real well.
I'd bought way more than I needed for a dinner party the weekend before we left, usually I might just have a little - I've got like a lb.

I'm stuck with those beans till Wednesday - but I know there is going to be some left. Question is, what do you do with beans you don't love anymore?

I've already got coffee to run through after a chemical backflush but I hate to waste anything - any practical use for these?

Ann

I substitute espresso for water in brownies, I think old / lousy coffee works pretty well for that. Also as you say, for after cleaning machine / grinder, I've thrown out bad beans before that I wish I'd saved, always hate it when I have to waste good coffee for something like that. Also, if I'm running low or don't have enough defrosted for the drip I bring to work - I'll throw in some old espresso if I have it, makes a difference but it's usually good enough for me.

Is it too old for French Press? I find three week post-roast is fine for FP coffee - it isn't as good as fresh but it's still good.

Failing that, you could use it as fertiliser

Three weeks old? I was about to make a Starbucks joke but decided not to...

Hmmm, I've found that a Cafe Crema is a reasonable use for my "old" beans, you know that ancient stuff which is about 7-10 days post-roast!

Here's Karl's thread- Give it a try, what have you got to lose besides tossing the whole lot?

http://www.home-barista.com/forum...e-cremas-t133.html

annp wrote:Question is, what do you do with beans you don't love anymore?

Give them to my mother in law?

annp wrote:I've already got coffee to run through after a chemical backflush but I hate to waste anything - any practical use for these?

How about volumetric dosing and latte art practice? That's a sample of the suggestions in Exercises for tuning your barista techniques. When you can dose ten times in a row with no more than 0.3 grams of variance, it is time to put away the scale, grasshopper.


Kan actually said, "When you snatch the pebble from my hand,
then it will be time for you to leave."

Since its unlikely that I'm going to be baking in the next few weeks (we are BOTH on a diet after our yummy vacation) I may need to take Dan's advice - at least about the latte art...

Ack, dose without a scale?

Don't take away my training wheels Obi-Wan!

Ann

I put any leftover beans in a zip top bag and keep them with my cleaning kit. After a backflush I use the junk beans for the seasoning shot. No sense in wasting good bean for a sink shot.

We have been grinding a bit of coffee ( around a double ) and sucking it into our vacuum cleaner while vacuuming. We find it to be the best natural odorizer to hide the icky vacuum smell.

Yeah--you could make espresso-chocolates out of them. Just bake them into brownies or heat some dark-chocolate around them. It's never to late to make a tasty treat!

-Ben

Good idea using "past prime" coffee for making desserts; see Making desserts with espresso and Espresso as Dessert for more ideas. We made coffee ice cream following a Ben & Jerry's recipe very close to Dave's and it was excellent. But they recommended freeze dried coffee while Dave's is the real deal.

Hey, there's already a Black Cat chocolate bar, why not ice cream... ?