Compass Coffee wrote:There is only one way coffee could/should be sold in a grocery store do to logistics involved, in the freezer.

Properly bagged stored at room temperature coffee won't go rancid for months true. Which isn't the same as the coffee still singing. We pull ours from our retail shelves day 10 and use for in house. Definitely not stale and not even faded, in fact a few lighter roasts not even quite peaked for espresso. But most of our coffees start to loose what made them "special", start to fade, around day 15 so pulling day 10 still leaves time.

Good to hear. Heck Stumptown sells coffee far older than that at their retail locations and in much @!#$tier packaging.

As far as CCC and Intelly telling Fresh Market that their coffee can be sold up to 4 months post roast, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the truth. I see where they sell their coffee if they had one iota of self-dignity and respect for their product they wouldn't sell it to places like this. They are large chains at this point who don't NEED to sell their coffee to these places to make money or get their name out there.

In other words while I can enjoy their coffee I think they are a bunch of hypocrites.

All the gases will leach out after 15 days and the oils start to dry a bit. Fact of life. I always wonder if you can seal the beans up and put them at -20 degrees to keep them nice. How long will that last? Even plastics are porous and you can't keep the beans for *that* long, even at cold temps. But that would be my suggestion for elongating the life of your coffee beans. Someone please chime in on this because I don't want to lead anyone wrong.

Jim and others did some testing a while back and they couldn't detect any degradation after two months:

/store-coff ... eezer.html

My freezer doesn't stay as cold as the one they used for the test, and I vacuum seal my beans rather than just using a mason jar. With that procedure, I've never noticed any loss of flavor in one or two month old beans so long as they are sealed and frozen while fresh. I got pretty bad results the one time I tried pulling shots with six-month old beans that had gotten lost in the back of my freezer, so that suggests an outer limit, at least with higher temperature freezing.

It was Ken Fox and JimS who posted on freezing, and I recall that they could not tell fresh from frozen. I trusted their tastebuds and have been freezing ever since with good results.

I regularly buy commercial Italian roasts off grocery shelves. These often don't even have roast dates, just best before dates. As noted, these probably don't sing the way they would when two weeks post roast, but if properly sealed they stay fresh and tasty. It is easy to see if one gets a bag that was not sealed, because they are clearly stale.

[creative nickname] wrote:Jim and others did some testing a while back and they couldn't detect any degradation after two months:

/store-coff ... eezer.html

My freezer doesn't stay as cold as the one they used for the test, and I vacuum seal my beans rather than just using a mason jar. With that procedure, I've never noticed any loss of flavor in one or two month old beans so long as they are sealed and frozen while fresh. I got pretty bad results the one time I tried pulling shots with six-month old beans that had gotten lost in the back of my freezer, so that suggests an outer limit, at least with higher temperature freezing.

Thanks, Creative and others! I hoped that vacuum packed, frozen beans would be okay because nuts do really well under those conditions and really, how much difference is there between a coffee bean and a nut Relieved to hear that the collective knowledge supports it. Thanks for the info!

Freezing roasted coffee is far from a new or novel idea. Pioneer coffee scientist Michael Sivetz actually applied for and was awarded a patent for preserving fresh roasted coffee based on vacuum sealing and freezing (at -40f or lower) in March 2004. Personally almost a decade ago I did my own experiments. The longest experiment 7 day rested then 1 year vac sealed frozen ~0f. Had a video pulling 90% crema shots of the stuff that tasted delish but was on an old computer that died without a backup so can't post it. I routinely have half dozen different coffees in the freezer at all times at home. Pull it out, quickly measure out what I'll grind then it's immediately back in the freezer. I used to use mason jars with dome lids I'd vac on each time (via Foodsaver attachment) but now just use high barrier bags for a month or two frozen no problem.

skittles_s wrote:I would love to know what the roasters think of this response, specifically the fourth month statement.

I have seen at least one roaster label their retail bags with both the roast date and a sell-by date. If I recall, those sell-by dates were four or six weeks post-roast: long by my standards but much better than my experience with this chain.

4 months! YIKES!!!!

Most high end roasters are roasting every day and want their offerings used in a timely fashion - NOT 4 months later! I have to say that this reminds me of Burger King. When I first went to one in the early 1960's (maybe even late 1950's) they would take your order at one window and you moved to a 2nd window where they took your $ and then to a 3rd window where your just-made food was handed to you. Compared with today's BK where they are grilling burgers at 2:00 to sell at 3:00. The burgers you are buying at 2:00 were grilled at 1:00.

It would seem that EVERY quality roaster would want you to use their beans starting 2, 3 or 4 days post roast and then buy more as these run out.

Len
PS: I think 15 minutes in hamburger time = 1 month in roasted coffee time

Intrepid510 wrote:Good to hear. Heck Stumptown sells coffee far older than that at their retail locations and in much @!#$tier packaging.

This is my experience as well. On the corner is a place that sells Stumptown that is usually a more than a few weeks old (okay, not 4 months old but still old). Every now and then I'll go in to check if they have fresh bags, but no avail. So I go to Cafe Grumpy another block further--and I'm always happy with their beans.

Btw, there is a online grocery delivery place that carries some name brands at competitive prices but I am too scared to buy because of fear of stale coffee.

Quick question: are the beans you bought processed differently? I don't know what the chemical process is but the difference I am referring to is roast date vs best by date.

Edit: I should add that I don't really mind if grocery stores sell oldish coffee since most people might not be able to tell the difference. We have to keep in mind that we are certainly a very niche market. But the place I referred to above is a third-wave owned place so they should have a higher standard (in fact, it's in their name!)