What's the difference between fresh coffee beans and old beans?

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Every Friday night, coffee enthusiasts gather in the store to taste the new coffee on the shelves next week. Tonight, a self-baking enthusiast brought a handletter.

"this bag of 2012 Ethiopian Aricha coffee beans is a treasure that I have been reluctant to drink. Knowing that you will open the roaster every Friday for everyone to exchange ideas on fried beans, why don't you guide me to stir-fry tonight and I'll buy you a drink? "

Coffee is very similar to red wine. Bakers and drinkers are generally catchy to famous producing areas and estates. The surging fruit rhyme of Aricha sun beans, like marshmallows, was impressive last year. You know what? In a transparent and tight bag? The coffee beans are greenish green and slightly yellowish, which is the characteristic of sun beans. As soon as I opened it, although the pungent smell was fragrant, it was slightly less lively than the one used by the store in previous years. He couldn't wait to put the beans into the red-hot roller, and I timed him.

More than ten minutes later, the fried beans were freshly baked. Everyone here is looking forward to it.

The fruity aroma becomes cramped by suppression.

"Why, why is the fruit acid so rigid?" A guest has a drinking problem. Everyone put the beans into the mouth, chewing coffee beans can rule out the cause? The cause caused by improper cooking, eat the original flavor directly.

This suppressed and transient fruity aroma is called 'baggy', just like the taste of fruit baked in a plastic bag for too long. In addition, this is last year's old beans, some of the acid may have volatilized or decomposed. "

"Old beans are not good, are they? I drank a kind of coffee called old aged Mandheling in Tokyo, and the price is not cheap at all! "

When coffee was still a commodity, warehouses in South American countries generally accumulated large amounts of raw beans, waiting for secondhand goods to be sold. At that time, bakers were used to using beans with low water content, because they were easy to stir-fry, energy-saving, low-acid (poor handling of coffee at that time, poor acid quality) and sticky taste. Best suited for the recipe base of espresso (espresso base).

As for Japan, because of its unique coffee culture, people are used to deep fried beans with low acidity and long tail rhyme. Among them, Santos of Brazil, Blue Mountain of Jamaica and Mantenin of Java are the examples. After three to ten years of aging, Mantenin coffee will develop a unique flavor of cedar and spice. However, if the environment of the warehouse is not controlled properly, it will easily become moldy.

Old age, may be coincidence, can also be intentional. A registered specialty in India (similar to sparkling wine only from the French champagne region) is that by chance, coffee beans have a unique smell of stale and spicy due to sea breeze and rainy season. This kind of coffee called Monsooned Malabar is correctly a method of treatment, not a bean seed. There is a coffee shop in East Tsim Sha Tsui with this bean as the basic recipe. Interested friends might as well try it.

Patrick Tam (owner of the boutique coffee shop Knockbox, approved barista of the American Fine Coffee Association and European Fine Coffee Association, CQI recognized cup tester, Cup of Excellence's first Hong Kong judge)