We were away for vacation in Japan for the past two weeks. That was a marvelous trip. What that meant from an espresso perspective was that we were about 75% through our bag of beans before we left, and so the remaining beans sat around for two weeks enjoying their beany lives. When we left, the beans were just shy of 3 weeks from the roast date, so when we came back they were at 5 weeks.
The espresso I made after getting back was markedly different from what I remember having before we left. (I’ll note that I didn’t have any coffee while in Japan, because tea.) I know that beans change over time in a way that affects the flavor of the espresso, and I’m used to tweaking my grind settings accordingly over the ~2 weeks that it usually takes us to get through a bag of beans. But this is the first time that I experienced a contrast in taste that covered 2 weeks all at once. It was pretty remarkable.
I know that this isn’t news for anyone on this forum, but this was quite the eye-opener for me. And my sense is that most of us are having espresso on a regular basis, and don’t go without espresso for a 2 week gap very often. The difference in taste with a 2 week gap in time is quite a different experience from the incremental changes in taste when having espresso more frequently over that same period.