Ten months ago, the nice folks at the Chicago Counterculture Training Center gave be a bag of a Barraoida PNG, lightly roasted on the 8th April 20114. It was a lovely coffee, ripe, with sweet peach and melon flavors, and an aroma of baked cookies. I drank about half of it; but somehow the rest of the bag got lost in the back of a drawer until yesterday. Instead of chucking it; I decided to see what it tasted like. So a brewed a few cups and pulled a few shots.

Dry Fragrance: at the finer espressos grind, nearly neutral; at the coarser brewing grind, a mild hint of skunkiness
Shot making and Brewing: the beans soften with age and produce fewer fines. This affects both espresso and drip brewing, requiring higher doses or finer grind settings, or slower pouring for pour over or lower flow/pressure for shots
Wet Aroma: pretty much AWOL on both.
Mouthfeel: slightly less oils/fats in the cup, very much reduced crema and emulsification in the shot, but still a bit.
Acidity: a surprise, the acidity nd sweetness are not much different than the same coffee after ten days so. After the initial mellowing, the sugars and acids seem to remain constant.
Flavor: The basic sugar, fruit acid and caramel flavors remain. But without any aromatics, the effect is more like a well composed soft drink with artificial flavors than a fresh coffee.
Finish and aftertaste working the mouth hard for the aftertaste, one does get the ghost of the aromas retronasally; but unless I was in deliberate tasting mode, I doubt I'd have noticed.

I am surprised by this experience: the coffee did not go flat; nor did it develop skunky flavors. Instead, it turned into a caffeinated soft drink. If I were scoring, this coffee would still come in at around 80 points. Based on this, I expect to see very light roasted coffees to be used more and more in pods. Properly ripened and sorted specialty coffees can be roasted light without showing any flaws; and at these roast levels, they stale to a pleasant, albeit very soft drink-like, taste.

I picked up two bags of Baroida today.. It was roasted on 2/17. I froze one bag, I will say - it's not the most crema rich coffee... but my God it makes an amazing latte.

Jofari wrote:Is there a specific reason you are attributing the lack of expected staling with this coffee being a light roast instead of other characteristic of the beans (e.g. variety or region)?

Excellent question. It could indeed be some other factor.

The published studies on staling used medium and dark roasts with generic coffees. Dark roasts fared poorly; the darker caramels and dry distillates get skunky. The medium roasts did not go skunky, but ended up tasting flat and slightly bitter, like unsweetened cocoa. Light roasts were not tried, since the studies were done b large coffee companies using low grade coffees. So for all I know, higher grade, sweet and ripe coffees fare better. But I also think the dark roast compounds are more prone to turning nasty when they oxidize.

One of the more interesting things we did at a George Howell "for the love of coffee" event I attended was a comparison of "new, old and stale" versions of the same coffee. The "new" was in fact also old (2 years I think), but the greens had been stored frozen and vacuum sealed, which GH contends essentially stops the aging process. The "old" was freshly roasted, but the greens had been stored in normal warehouse conditions. The "stale" had been preground (I think they said one week prior) to accelerate the staling process. I forget the coffee but I believe it was a Central American, definitely light roasted as is pretty much everything GH sells.

The "new" coffee excellent, bright, lively, typical GH quality. The "old" really wasn't that bad, but it did have a musty off flavor that I recognized from greens I've left in my basement too long before roasting. Many tasters thought it was fine. The "stale" was rank and foul, universally no one wanted to drink it.

Of course since the "stale" coffee was really pre-ground, could be the end result was different than what you experienced. Could be there is something special about your particular coffee, or could be that pre grinding was causing something worse than normal staling.

I have found many months old bags of my coffee laying around and no longer get surprised by the quality of the cup. The aroma is certainly all but completely gone, and the brewing happens a bit differently without a bloom, but the tactile and taste qualities are generally good as new.

I don't know if this is limited to ultra light roasts. I pulled coffee from a failed grocery store relationship. The coffee was just pre second crack coffee 6 months post roast that was still brewing nice. In fact, the aroma being a bit more pungent hadn't even trailed off.

I do think a lot of coffee dogma should be met with skepticism.

endlesscycles wrote:... I do think a lot of coffee dogma should be met with skepticism.

I think you have hit on something here, the established dogma is not holding up to experience.

This thread: 2 month old Kimbo from Italy produces great espresso. I'm confused! adds to these observations.

Nate42 wrote:One of the more interesting things we did at a George Howell "for the love of coffee" event I attended was a comparison of "new, old and stale" versions of the same coffee. The "new" was in fact also old (2 years I think), but the greens had been stored frozen and vacuum sealed, which GH contends essentially stops the aging process. The "old" was freshly roasted, but the greens had been stored in normal warehouse conditions. The "stale" had been preground (I think they said one week prior) to accelerate the staling process. ...
The "new" coffee excellent, bright, lively, typical GH quality. The "old" really wasn't that bad, but it did have a musty off flavor that I recognized from greens I've left in my basement too long before roasting. Many tasters thought it was fine. The "stale" was rank and foul, universally no one wanted to drink it.

That's odd. He ran the same demo a few years back when Abe Carmeli and I visited his roastery. i recall the old green coffee being awful, and the preground just being flat.

I was surprised by the results too, I would have thought the stale would be bland but inoffensive. Maybe the coffee in my demo was unusually poorly suited to being stale?

As to the quality of the "old" coffee, don't get me wrong, it was not good by GH standards, and didnt resemble its fresher self that much. But if you imagined you were drinking a monsooned or some other funky coffee, it was tolerable.