Oldest beans you'd be happy with?

capuchin

When ordering your beans, (say you’re trying out a new roastery) - what’s the earliest acceptable roast date in your opinion relative to ordering? Would you be happy if they were roasted 2 weeks before the order? A month? A week?

At what point would you complain, and at what point would you never use the roastery again?

MediumRoastSteam

capuchin - it depends what they say on their website. If they say they roast to order, then my expectation of the roast date would be the date I ordered. Some roasters say they only roast on a certain day or the week, so, as an example, if they say they roast on a Tuesday, and you order on a Monday, then I’d expect the beans to be one week old.

There was a discussion about this in this forum a while back. I’ll try to find the thread, but the search function is virtually useless.

LMSC

capuchin From our experience, we have received beans dated 2 weeks a few times. Once, some of us on the forum received bulk beans without a roast date. Upon checking, they advised they were a month old. Even this was fine to drink, except we felt let down considering those orders were 2 × 1 KGs.

Except these stray instances, all of them as suggested by MRS.

DavecUK

MediumRoastSteam There was a discussion about this in this forum a while back. I’ll try to find the thread, but the search function is virtually useless.

No it’s not, I put “roast date” in and this thread was listed

https://coffeetime.freeflarum.com/d/430-coffee-best-before-dates/6

Cuprajake

I prefer my beans fresher, I dig right in after a week.

I find that if I leave them crazy long they tail off for me, and I seem to get more irratic results 🤷

MediumRoastSteam

From my perspective, it’s about managing your own stock. If I were to drink straight away, then I wouldn’t mind. But if I were to keep them for longer, freezing for example, I’d rather they be as fresh as possible.

To me, it’s more about what I’m buying. If the advertisement is about freshly roasted beans to order, then as a consumer I’d expect just that, nothing more, and nothing less.

tompoland

Depends on the roast depth. I would be OK with dark roasted beans for 7 - 10 days post roast. Lighter beans 3 and even 4 weeks post roast would be fine. I tested peak flavor dates on dozens of my own roasts and found the the lighter the roast, the longer they take to get to peak.

Cuprajake

I tend to stay around medium looking beans, with the odd light thrown in, but it takes me a while to drink as the Mrs doesn’t like fruity stuff

MediumRoastSteam

DavecUK - ha. It’s because it only looks at the thread titles (maybe first post, I don’t know) rather than its content Dave. So it found “dates”.

P.S.: if I type “roast date” I don’t get that thread in the results. But if I type “roast dates” then I do. In my book, that’s useless. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Rob1

Depends on the bean >1 week or >2 months,.

capuchin

Thanks for the replies. I think @MediumRoastSteam nails it for me, that it’s about the consumer experience.

I made the thread as I recently ordered 4kg~ of coffee, and the roast dates were mostly 3-5 weeks old. (one bag was a week old only) - they advertise it as fresh coffee and that they roast weekly. I got a bit annoyed and sent over a semi snarky email saying that I don’t expect 500g/1kg bags of fresh coffee to be over 3 weeks old. He replaced those bags and explained that the less popular roasts are sometimes older stock, so I won’t be naming the roaster; I’m fairly satisfied with the resolution though still a little grumpy.

But just in general, it’s not something I expected. Every roaster I’ve used until now has been roasting 3~ days max from my order. (mancoco even asked me if I wanted a new roast or a few days old) So I’m not sure how many do send out 5 week old bags.

DavecUK

I think coffee 2 weeks old is fine, in fact even 4 weeks is not a problem if it’s well packaged. I do have a concern about ECO packaging and it’s ability to form an effective barrier.

I asked once on CFUK for people to do an experiment (was derided by the usual suspects), so perhaps I will try again here. When you get coffee…tape up the valve and store only the fully sealed bags in a cupboard (one you don’t open often), until you finally come to use it. If the cupboard smells of coffee, then the packaging being used, isn’t forming an effective barrier (assuming the taped valve is still sealed.).

I’m curious about which eco packaging works to form an effective barrier, and which doesn’t?

capuchin

DavecUK The problem I feel with this is that they will likely not be bagged immediately at the roastery or until order. (as they dont know the size of order) so could be sitting around in a huge vat or something which is opened for each order.

LMSC

DavecUK When you get coffee…tape up the valve and store only the fully sealed bags in a cupboard (one you don’t open often), until you finally come to use it. If the cupboard smells of coffee, then the packaging being used, isn’t forming an effective barrier

Already being experimented since early Jan - storing about 2 KGs in their 250g packs !

Considering the bag size, I thought Vac Pac doesn’t make sense. Get the air out, sticky tape out and store them in one of the garage cup boards. Some are plastic resealable bags and the others are thick paper bags.

I haven’t seen observed unusual in terms of smell or loss of flavour yet - opened Blackcat, CC and Origin so far. The latter’s bags are recycled plastic bags.

I will open a new bag tomorrow. I will observe for coffee smells. Thx

Tiramigiu

Problems I only dream about. If you like Neapolitan roasts (aka Spanish Roast or Dark French), it’s almost impossible to find fresh roasts. I’m lucky if the beans are less than two months old. I usually have to estimate the roasting date based on the sell-by date. Now I’ve finally found a roaster here in Germany that guarantees me more or less freshly roasted Neapolitan coffee. But even that is imported from Italy.

I really have the feeling that nobody enjoys the traditional Neapolitan roasts anymore :(

You can’t imagine how confused people look when I go into a roastery and they offer me their darkest roast with names like ‘Inferno’ and I tell them it’s way too light for me.

Well…. maybe I have to wait for the fourth cofee wave.

OldGregg

I mean the beans may be fine, but if you ship me something a month old - I don’t think I’ll be ordering again. I’d say two weeks would be my limit.

MediumRoastSteam

Nah - it’s about getting what you pay for. If the website says freshly roasted, or roasted to order, I’d expect it to be within days (see my previous post above).

You got to ask yourself… if it was just “fine”, then why don’t they advertise that on their shop front? Imagine:

“Order Now! Fresh coffee, roasted to order”
“Please note: For not so popular coffee, your coffee may have been roasted two weeks ago”

Unless it’s discounted, that doesn’t look very appealing to me.