Read the label information on the coffee package and choose the good coffee.

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Coffee beans are now available in shopping malls or cafes, which may order coffee beans directly from roasters or buy them on a special website. In any case, reading the labels on the packaging can help us buy products that better meet our expectations. The volume label on the label decoding package contains a lot of important information, which can help us to select better quality coffee.

One-way exhaust valve

Combined with thermal insulation packaging, it can release carbon dioxide from coffee beans to the outside of the package while preventing oxygen from entering the package (to prevent coffee beans from oxidizing and deteriorating).

Production resume

Clearly mark the producing country, producing area, producer and harvest year of coffee beans (can help distinguish old beans)

Suggestion on the way of cooking

Depending on the planting soil, the variety of coffee beans and the degree of baking, suitable cooking methods (such as high-pressure fast flushing or hand dripping filtration) are recommended.

Weight

The standard package in France is 250 grams, but large packages of coffee beans of 300 grams, 500 grams or even 1 kilogram can also be found on the market.

Sealing property

Some packages have repeated sealing designs, which have an added effect on the preservation of coffee beans.

Source authentication

According to the production area, washing plant, farm, producer and production batch number to be certified.

Additional instructions

Other information such as the altitude, variety and treatment of coffee beans are marked.

Baking date

Coffee beans pay attention to freshness, but if you want to use slow extraction, it is best to use it five days after the baking date; if it is used to make espresso, you have to wait at least a week (ideally two to three weeks).

Validity period

Usually refers to the "best appreciation period", for reference only. Some coffees have a long shelf life, and the best way to know if they are stale is to taste them yourself.

Watch out for advertising traps

"coffee concentration"

Some packages will be marked with coffee concentration, but there is no indication other than numbers or words such as "strong" and "mild". The purpose of this kind of marking is mainly for marketing, which is not really useful information. The concentration of coffee depends on the amount of gouache, and the proportion varies with different brewing methods. So the coffee concentration is closely related to the brewing method. The concentration on the package of wholesale coffee mostly refers to "baking degree" or "fineness of grinding particles", which, to put it bluntly, is the degree of bitterness.

"use 100% Arabica coffee beans."

Coffee beans of better quality are basically derived from Arabica.

"slow-baked coffee"

It is certainly better to take the time to bake slowly than to explode beans quickly, but the roasting of coffee beans does not mean that they are roasted properly. Depending on the baking curve, coffee beans roasted for 12 minutes may be better than those roasted for 18 minutes, so "slow baking" does not mean "high quality" or "advanced".

Provenance "my Coffee Life proposal" / Sancai Culture publication