The Importance of Fresh Coffee

Nic Bilderback

The challenge of “that cup” is one we constantly try to find. Most everyone who loves coffee has had that “best cup of coffee” they’ve ever had. The challenge is to find the next one, or at least, recreate the experience, but this is much easier said than done. Aside from the many things that make the world of specialty coffee ever-changing and that single delicious cup ever-fleeting, one of the greatest among them is coffee freshness.

At Mundos, having fresh coffee is a core value. As coffee enthusiasts ourselves, having delicious fresh coffee is what drives us to pursue better and better things and what fills us with the passion to share in the excitement with others. As a business, we have another choice, from a food safety perspective, coffee, when kept dry, is shelf-stable. We could easily keep our coffees as long as we’d like; we could have our coffees on the shelves of the store. However, we care too much for that to be the end of it. We respect every hand the coffee has passed through on its way to us. We respect the farmers that cared for these plants for roughly 6 years before they were ready to harvest, we respect the harvesters that hand-picked and hand-sorted each cherry to their standards, we respect the dryers, the importers, the shippers, our employees, and you. Every coffee that passes over our bar has had a long line of passionate people behind it. This is why in our service of you, we care so deeply about freshness. All the coffee on our shelves is no more than two weeks off roast; let’s look at why.

When coffee arrives at a roaster, it is green and looks and smells nothing like roasted coffee. The seeds are much denser, and the smell is often grassy and grain-like. It is only after the roasting process where the pleasant aroma and flavors come out. When coffee is roasted, it undergoes major chemical and physical changes. Sugars react with amino acids in a process called the Maillard Reaction. The seeds open up and take on the toasted color we’re familiar with.

This process results in the synthesis of hundreds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and CO2. Both of which, from the moment of creation, actively begin leaving the coffee.

There are generally considered to be five major tastes which our tongue can perceive, those being: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami (think savory). Many of the VOCs found in coffee contributed to aroma and are often referred to in the culinary world as “aromatic compounds”. When one consumes food of any kind, a process called retro-nasal olfaction takes place, in which aromatic compounds are released from a food and make their way to the back of the throat, and into the olfactory receptors in the nose. These compounds being processed by the brain is what allows one to determine the difference between complex flavors, such as sweet like sugar, and sweet like honey; or umami like steak, and umami like cheese. This is also why plugging your nose can help to eat something you may not like very much. Given this information, we find that VOCs are vital to the pleasant taste of good coffee.

So what does this mean for us coffee drinkers? Having as many aromatic compounds as possible is going to give us the most full flavor and true representation of what a coffee is, right? Not exactly. This is a somewhat common misconception among “fresh coffee folk” like us. As mentioned earlier, along with these VOCs, we can find lots of CO2 in coffee. Too much of this CO2 in your coffee, and you’ll find unpleasant flavors, often resembling green coffee, such as grass, grains, and corn. Though every coffee is different, it is best to rest your coffee a day or two before having it, and some people prefer to wait a little longer. This is also why we have a “bloom” stage when brewing coffee. It allows CO2 to release from the bed of coffee before we pour more solvent through to grab all of those tasty aromatic compounds. Because of this, there is a window, and it varies from coffee to coffee. However, we tend to enjoy coffee between 2 days to around a month off roast and find that two to three weeks is where many coffees are at their best. The method of extraction matters a lot to when you’ll best enjoy your coffee. Pour over, for example, tends to be more interesting when coffee is fresher, but espresso can be a little more forgiving to age. This is, to a degree, a matter of personal preference, so feel free to find when you best enjoy your coffee and purchase accordingly. Coffee storage is also important to freshness. To simplify a large body of research by many people: storing your coffee in a cool, dark, dry place in an airtight container will help it hold onto its VOCs a little bit longer.

Coffee is somewhat unique as a specialty beverage. Unlike a fine bourbon sitting on the shelf for years before drinking, the care needed to be taken by the consumer to enjoy coffee at its finest is intensive, and the passage of time is no friend. But like many of the best things in life, capturing that beautifully delicious cup of coffee is made so much sweeter by the reality that you may never have it that way again. I hope you have found value in this reading, and just maybe you’ll begin to pursue that excellent cup the way we do.