How to judge the freshness of Brazilian coffee beans

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With the growing popularity of boutique coffee in recent years, many coffee fans have begun to buy freshly roasted coffee beans, which are usually roasted only after orders have been placed on shopping websites to ensure that the coffee delivered to consumers is absolutely fresh.

Many curry fans will say: sometimes they will buy some stale coffee beans, and the expansion is not obvious when stewing the coffee by hand.

Coffee workers have always thought that the criteria for judging the freshness of coffee beans by the degree of expansion are too simple. Let's share some tips on judging the freshness of coffee beans:

Look, smell, ask, taste

1. Hope

Hope means to see with the eyes, that is, the expansion degree of coffee powder during stewing mentioned above, the same roasting degree, the same coffee bean, if the coffee powder has a greater expansion degree during stewing, it means that the fresher the bean is, the smaller the expansion degree is, the less the freshness is.

Hand-made coffee: four skills to judge the freshness of coffee beans are "look, smell, ask and taste".

Medium baked Hawaiian Kona (one week after baking)

The reason for this comparison is limited to the same kind of coffee beans and the same baking degree, because the coffee powder expansion of lightly roasted beans is lower than that of moderately roasted beans, while moderately roasted beans are much smaller than deep-roasted beans.

Hand-made coffee: four skills to judge the freshness of coffee beans are "look, smell, ask and taste".

Deeply baked Manning (one week after baking)

2. Smell

Smell dry incense and wet incense, take sun Yega Chuefei as an example, fresh sun Yega after grinding, smell dry fragrance, there is a very obvious fruit aroma and sweet or flower aroma, and smart and happy. On the other hand, the stale sun Yega smells dry incense after grinding, the aroma of fruit and sweetness or flowers is not obvious, and it is rigid and dull, and if the raw beans used for baking are aged beans, they will smell a burning smell.

Hand-made coffee: four skills to judge the freshness of coffee beans are "look, smell, ask and taste".

Smell dry incense (90 + Honey Kiss-shallow Bake)

After smelling the wet fragrance and fresh sun Yega, the smell of coffee grounds still has a particularly obvious sour aroma like fermented fruit, while when the fresh sun Yega is finished, the coffee grounds has no sour aroma, but a very monotonous burnt aroma.

Third, ask

First of all, the freshness of coffee beans depends on the freshness of raw coffee beans, because, after all, coffee cooked beans are roasted with raw coffee beans, so the freshness of raw coffee beans directly determines the freshness of coffee ripe beans, so we can't always focus on stewing expansion, that's just the appearance.

Raw coffee beans should be the freshest in the season. if the store uses the raw coffee beans from the previous year, then most of the original flavor has been lost, but this also depends on the preservation conditions, which refers to room temperature, non-sealed, non-vacuum storage conditions. Cooked coffee beans baked with stale coffee beans, even if you drink them within a week, are far less flavorful than those roasted in season for a month or so.

Hand-made coffee: four skills to judge the freshness of coffee beans are "look, smell, ask and taste".

Raw coffee beans

Therefore, to judge whether the beans are fresh by stewed expansion is the last resort. When you buy beans, you must pay attention to them. You must first ask whether your household coffee beans are seasonal beans.

Fourth, taste

Whether the freshness is good or not, you have to drink it in the stomach in the end, so "taste" is the final criterion. The flavor of fresh coffee beans is obvious, layered, three-dimensional and changeable, while after the flavor period, the flavor of coffee beans is obviously weakened, lack of hierarchical sense, monotonous. Those raw beans used by themselves are aged beans, just like the dried incense mentioned in "smell", there will be scorched flavor even in the taste.

Hand-made coffee: four skills to judge the freshness of coffee beans are "look, smell, ask and taste".

Coffee flavor wheel

Among the four methods, "smell" and "taste" take time to accumulate. Drink more and taste more in order to taste the subtle changes. It is still a difficult thing for beginners who are new to boutique coffee.