Degassing whole bean coffees - Page 2

Discuss flavors, brew temperatures, blending, and cupping notes.
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TomC
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#11: Post by TomC »

I know many competitive baristas will wait up to 14 or so days for a well cured coffee to come into it's best, whether that be extraction ratio or flavor in the cup, it's not sure. They do aim to have their coffees taste exactly like they describe, for the points entailed in the judgement. But that tells me that patience is a virtue with the finer coffees that are better sorted and picked thru.
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Rickpatbrown
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#12: Post by Rickpatbrown »

Are you sure his coffee was roasted that day, lol?
He might be trying to pull a fast one on some 2 week old coffee.

DamianWarS
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#13: Post by DamianWarS »

Charles Carroll wrote:Do whole beans need time to degas before being ground for espresso?

That they do seems to be an accepted opinion among many espresso lovers. So the other day I decided to play with whole beans that had been roasted earlier in the morning. And the result? I tasted the best espresso that I have ever made with my La Pavoni Europiccola. So I discussed this with my coffee roaster. He said that when gases form inside whole coffee beans it means that the beans were not roasted properly. /Charles
If the beans didn't have CO2 (the majority of the gas) you wouldn't get crema. Depleted CO2 in beans means it is stale and old. Your roaster might be talking about the roaster not selling their coffee until it has rested properly and that certainly is something a good roaster will track.

The CO2 provides a backpressure in espresso which means a greater resistance which is why old coffee needs to be grinded finer because it has less resistance (no CO2 backpressure). With filter it's not as important because pressure it's not a factor, you might have to bloom longer but otherwise trapped CO2 just escapes to the air.

Increased/decreased resistance effects extraction and there tends to be a goldilocks period when coffee has rested for a period. Not to say that old coffee and super new coffee can't give you good shots, like with everything espresso it's not one dimensional and you can still dial in new and old coffee. The advantage of new coffee is you can grind it and let it sit for an hour to accelerate the degassing but it's not something I've experimented with and for me I just grind what I got and dial it in by taste. If your shots keep getting tastier over the coming days then you can track how resting the coffee impacts the shots

Charles Carroll (original poster)
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#14: Post by Charles Carroll (original poster) »

BodieZoffa wrote:Your roaster is entitled to an opinion, but his definitely doesn't align with what I find to be the case. I've roasted all sorts of coffees to varying levels and any time I have a 'new to me green' I will give it a 'shot' at day 2 post roast, then maybe day 4-5, etc. to find the sweet spot. I find all coffees that I like (particular greens, roast level, etc.) to hit their peak in the day 7-9 range. Much earlier than that and the flavor is lacking and the crema/extraction is quite explosive for lack of a better term. I also look at and smell a batch day after day and can see/smell the changes that take place. Glad I gave up buying commercial roasted coffee years ago and will never resort to that again.
Just came back from buying coffee this morning. My friend still maintains that in whole beans which have been properly roasted there is no infusion of carbon dioxide. I must say that my taste absolutely agrees with this. The following link, Sivetz.com, will take you to the roaster my friend uses. Michael Sivetz died years ago. /Charles

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Jeff
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#15: Post by Jeff »

I can't disagree that you enjoy those beans.

When you roast beans, there are many chemical reactions due to the heat. Many of these produce CO2 and water, along with the compounds we associate with "coffee flavor". As the beans are roasted through, some of that gets trapped inside the cell walls. Unless you destroy those walls, CO2 will be in the roasted beans until it can diffuse, molecule by molecule, through the walls from the inside of the bean to the outside. A very dark roast breaks down more of the walls than a medium or lighter roast, but there is still trapped CO2. Perhaps a charcoal roast has minimal CO2, but isn't a flavor profile I enjoy.

One reference on this is https://perfectdailygrind.com/2019/01/w ... -roasters/

Enjoy the beans and how you prepare them. Your roaster seems to know how to produce great results with his greens and gear.

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baldheadracing
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#16: Post by baldheadracing »

I think that it is certainly possible to roast coffee in a way that makes it immediately drinkable. In the specialty coffee sphere this seems to be a property of mostly fluid-bed roasters like the Ikawa and, of course, Sivetz - and sample roasters generally. Among the light-roasted crowd, April coffee in Copenhagen was famous for roasting a little while before competition.

Traditional methods that are purely conductive like in Ethiopia are also brewed immediately after roasting.

However, in my experience, the catch is that the coffee doesn't last long. When I air-roast sample quantities in my iRoast2, I'm cupping/brewing within a day or two, and the coffee is noticably worse after a week.

I'm not all that up on the organic chemistry, but my understanding is the first part of the Strecker degredation produces CO2, but the second part uses CO2 and can give sweet smells (like honey). I could well be wrong on that, though. I never liked organic chemistry ... :oops:
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lukehk
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#17: Post by lukehk »

It's interesting to hear you say that. On my kaffelogic I do an initial brew within about 12 hours and it's a really good indication of the quality of the roast. Often it's the best one. I then leave it about 4 or 5 days and start again as inbetween this it seems to take a bit of a dive. Some coffee improves just over a week post roast but I have found numerous times that much past a week and they're past their best. 100g roasts are what I would call light and are usually 5min 30 to 6 minutes. I had a highly acidic Kenyan recently which took me to 730 to balance it out

DamianWarS
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#18: Post by DamianWarS replying to lukehk »

coffee is cupped between 8 to 24 hours upon roasting as per the SCA standards. of course cupping is immersion and about as simple as it gets for brewing coffee it is also used to determine green bean defects (as per the SCA use) and not really about optimising the flavour by letting it rest. We should expect completely different results with espresso.

lukehk
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#19: Post by lukehk »

I don't do espresso that quick but pour over no problem.

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baldheadracing
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#20: Post by baldheadracing »

FWIW, I wasn't talking about roasting and cupping for evaluating green coffee, as I've already bought the green :wink:.

I roast on the iRoast2 when I only have a small amount of green, or to help figure out how I want to roast on the 'big' 1kg.
-"Good quality brings happiness as you use it" - Nobuho Miya, Kamasada