As a microcosm, I sell bags of roasted beans at my coffee bar. I have a roast date displayed clearly on the front of every bag. If I have one bag of a particular coffee left on the shelf I will roast more, but not put those up for sale until the last bag is sold. If I don't, customers will reach behind the week old bag for the 1 day old one and the week old bag will sit until it's 3 weeks old when I toss it.

FYI, I lightly edited some of the snark in the earlier posts. No doubt nearly everyone participating in this thread already know them, but just in case, see Guidelines for productive online discussion for details.

Birdcollin wrote:That's an extremely valid point. I would never tell someone how to run there business however, I manage a large inventory of lumber and our goal is to move that lumber as many times per year as possible to turn cash. I don't understand the concept of hanging onto inventory so I can have some to sell later. But then again, I'm not distributing coffee. Maybe there's something to be said by some peoples infinite knowledge of coffee aging and the perfect time to distribute.

It would make sense as a way to keep a steady manageable workload. Instead of trying to push everything out as soon as possible, portion it up over time.

It makes sense for them because they need to keep origins in stock. If they post all of their ethiopia in summer/fall, and it's gone by winter, where is their customer going to go? To some other site to buy greens that have just been listed (perhaps sans arrival date). So they probably do a lot of work to evaluate coffees over their fresh crop life (approx 1 year, of course) and move coffees that need to move - not because they are bad yet, but because they may go flat.

The only tidbit I'd offer folks here is learn harvest/arrival dates for various countries and if you're going to stock up on a coffee, don't stock up on a coffee right before the new harvest arrives. In other words, if you buy coffee from sweet marias and use it right away, you're good. If you buy coffee from SM and hold it for 9 months...well, get yourself a deep freezer.

As a commercial roaster, evaluating how much shelf life our coffees have is important as well. Will I move a coffee that has 6+ months on it, or will I move a coffee that will be flat next month? It's often still good right now, but we'll discount, feature, etc the coffees that we need to. I once had a significant amount of coffee go flat so I just held it for practice roasting after software upgrades to the roaster. That kinda hurts the bottom line.

Isn't this rotation of annual offerings a necessity to be able to offer most varieties throughout the year? In other words, aren't all coffees on an annual growing cycle?

You could always use their coffee calendar to know what's fresh-off-the-boats when you order there or anywhere.

Funny, I found this thread while googling about Sweet Maria's arrival dates to try to understand the seemingly old "new arrivals." I appreciate Sweet Maria's transparency, but I have no interest in purchasing green coffee beans that have been sitting in a warehouse for nearly a year. Burman's offers much fresher coffees. Almost all of their coffees are from 2019, with most having arrived after February. I really do think I notice the freshness -- certainly in the smell of the greens and likely in the cup.

I hope that Sweet Maria's can improve its inventory management and be able to offer fresher beans in the future. They are certainly an exemplary company in this industry. I also hope that other greens vendors begin to offer arrival dates. As far as I can tell, Sweet Maria's, Burman's, and Happy Mug always list their arrival date. Roastmasters does most of time. CoffeeBeanCorral offers no information, which makes me hesitant to purchase from them, despite their great variety of offerings.

Avast wrote:Burman's offers much fresher coffees. Almost all of their coffees are from 2019, with most having arrived after February.

Nobody can really offer "fresher" coffees. Coffee from a certain origin gets harvested at a certain time of the year. Doesn't matter really when it ships, arrives, etc... if you are roasting Ethiopian coffee right now it was picked nov 2017 to feb 2018. The coffees that were just harvested nov 2018 to feb 2019 are still resting or just starting their journeys to the united states.

If you are roasting burundi/rwanda/sumatra/brazil (southern hemisphere coffees) they were picked last summer, processed, rested, and arrived in the US no earlier than this past november/december.

You can't get "fresh" corn from Kansas in February. You can't harvest coffee from Ethiopia in July. So that's why we refer to coffee as "fresh crop" and "past crop". Coffee becomes past crop when fresh harvests are available from that origin.

I am aware of that. I've read this article extensively: https://royalcoffee.com/harvest-arrival ... e-seasons/

So, yes, different origins have different harvest times. However, at pretty much every point in the year, there is bound to be some fresh coffee coming in. Moreover, some countries, like Brazil and Colombia, seem to have more continuous harvesting.

None of this exonerates Sweet Maria's. I'll give you an example: A lot of greens vendors are advertising the first arrivals from the most recent harvest in Costa Rica. Roastmaters, CoffeeBeanCorral, and Happy Mug are all selling the latest harvest of Tarrazu La Minita, which arrived in the last month. Sweet Maria's also just listed a "new arrival" Costa Rican. You would probably assume that it's from the same fresh harvest that the other vendors are selling, right? But it arrived in September 2018! It's likely a harvest that is a year older than what the other greens sellers are offering! The same pattern appears for other origins too.