I know ideally you grind right before making the coffee, but in your experience, how long can you actually wait before the quality of shot declines?

Would 15-20 minutes be too long to wait?

There's been a lot of talk recently--especially with companies like GnB supporting pregrinding for espresso--about the effects of allowing coffee to sit after being ground. In my experience, I have noticed a significant decline in the quality of a shot if I allow the Robur to go unused for more than 10-15 minutes without a purge. It is particularly important with regards to espresso.

-Dave-

Rao's new book says resting ground coffee for 30-60 min is roughly equiv to resting the beans for a few days. Which implies that resting ground coffee for > 15 min shouldn't be such a bad thing.

My rule of thumb is if it's sitting there for an hour I shouldn't have ground it.

Thanks for the replies. The reason why I ask is b/c I only have 30 minutes in the morning for coffee, and I probably spend more time making the 4 coffees for my wife and I than I do drinking them. I figured that I would just weigh my beans, grind them, and then split them evenly over 4 double portafilter baskets. They would be ready to go, almost k-cup style.

At some point my skill/speed might increase to where I could do them all on the fly but I'm not there yet!

Exactly what Kyle and Charles are doing at their two L.A. shops. Up with sommeliers, down with artisans

badmajon wrote:Thanks for the replies. The reason why I ask is b/c I only have 30 minutes in the morning for coffee, and I probably spend more time making the 4 coffees for my wife and I than I do drinking them. I figured that I would just weigh my beans, grind them, and then split them evenly over 4 double portafilter. .....

If you have a doser you could do that easily.