I want to buy and try the coffee beans you mentioned immediately! thank

I am drinking now Caffè Braccio Qualità Rossa, it's a 50% robusta and 50% arabica blend, with a clear amaretto note that I find very interesting.

It's not sold around, you must find a "bar" which has Caffè Braccio and buy a bag straight from them. I was very surprised by the quality at a cheap price (I don't remember whether I paid it €10 or €11 for a 1 kg bean bag).

This is something I want to do more often, buying the coffee straight in the café, if I like their coffee.

By the way, Tazza d'Oro has a famous café very near the "Pantheon"* (in Rome), I drank innumerable times their coffee and especially their granita di caffè con panna when it was cheap and I was a student. Now it isn't cheap any more. It used to cost like a cappuccino, now it costs like three of them.

* The Pantheon probably was not the Pantheon but a temple devoted to the cult of Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus.

I am curious about all these made in Italy beans being mentioned on this thread. I checked that website that Jim Shulman mentioned several posts behind "Italian Bean Delight". I figure once I get a bag delivered that the roast date will be several weeks or months in the past since they are roasted in Italy and who knows how long ago that was. Am I correct? Do these beans age differently? Can they be frozen like any other bean once I open the bag? Do they age at the same rate or slower once opened?

F1 wrote:I am curious about all these made in Italy beans being mentioned on this thread. ... I figure once I get a bag delivered that the roast date will be several weeks or months in the past since they are roasted in Italy and who knows how long ago that was. Am I correct? ...

Typically Italian beans have a "best by" date, usually one to one and a half years after roasting. This sounds terrible; and it would be if the coffee had lots of fruit and flower aromatics. But Italian espresso blends are never about fresh fruits and flowers, but about chocolate, nuts, dried fruit, maybe a twaist of non descript acidty in lighter roasts, some tobacco smoke in the darker ones, and brandy notes in the ones with lots of good robusta. These flavors, when stored in a valve bag, do keep for a year. Think of these coffees as trail mix, not fresh produce.

I typically buy kilo bags, use them in 200 gram lots and keep the orignal bag in the freezer. Not sure if the freeing part is necessary. The 200 grams goes slow, since I use these for my morning cappas, and when I'm jonesing for a comfort food shot, but not for my regular shots.

Sounds good. Im gonna place an order of the Manaresi Gold from that Italian Bean Delight website.

another_jim wrote: I typically buy kilo bags, use them in 200 gram lots and keep the orignal bag in the freezer. Not sure if the freeing part is necessary. The 200 grams goes slow, since I use these for my morning cappas, and when I'm jonesing for a comfort food shot, but not for my regular shots.

How do you avoid condensation on the 200g portions when you pour the beans out from your frozen kilo bag? Or do you not worry about that?

I am just now beginning this strategy, and I personally feel that, when I take out the beans, I will first let the box reach ambient temperature, and then open the box to "air" the beans to have them reach a normal humidity, and then I will put them in the hopper.

Ideally, one should store the beans in the freezer without air, so that when they are unfrozen there is little air in the box to release the humidity. But I don't think humidity in itself is such a problem if the temperature is very low, because the low temperature will greatly slow down the proliferation of moulds and bacteria, and the degassing. I think overall there is a net gain even without making a vacuum in the box.

The proof is in the pudding and I still have to see how the pudding tastes like, though.

The proof has been poorly documented in these forums, but it exists in the many anecdotes and observations spanning years. You don't have to do any of those gymnastics of allowing for the beans to reach a specific temperature prior to using in any way. Worrying about air entrapment etc. A freezer bag with as little air as possible is fine. You don't need to vacuum seal. You really only need to worry about locking in the "freshness" after opening the bag and freezing prior to them falling of a cliff almost immediately - IMHO.

I'm an "N of 1" and I can certainly tell you that you can just use your beans right out of the freezer. Quite frankly, you lock those beans in time and never really worry about their character changing for the duration of their use.

I did some experiments where I measured the moisture content of beans before and after freezing and exposing them to ambient air. I included blind taste tests. I don't think it matters either. I've posted about it numerous times. I don't think anybody is listening.

We have a nice local roaster in town. I like their coffee. It's available at various markets in 8oz bags. Sort of expensive. I have been turning my nose up at it since the pandemic because it always seems to be older than 2-3 weeks.

Right now I'm drinking Lavazza Super Crema. I bought a kilo through Amazon. It was very inexpensive ($22 including shipping). Based on the "best by" date I think it arrived 8+ months post roast. I split it into 250g bags and put it in the freezer four months ago, so now it's been more than a year since it was roasted. I'm just now getting around to pulling shots with it. It tastes like liquid Nutella, only better. Nutella isn't as good. It isn't a complicated coffee but it's very satisfying and super easy to pull.

@jpender.

I also just got a bag of Super Crema from Amazon two days ago. What parameters are you using? I tried 18in 27out in 30secs at 197ish. It is good and reminds me of espresso vivace, but I don't think I still got it dialed in. Maybe I need to go more ristretto like 18in 18out.