Qianjie teaches you how to make coffee. Learn what fresh coffee beans are from raw coffee beans.

The editor of the previous "teach you to make Coffee" series introduced you to some things about hand-brewed coffee. Today, the editor does not teach you how to make coffee, but starts from coffee raw beans to talk about the importance of fresh coffee. The freshness here actually contains multiple definitions.

Why does fresh coffee have multiple definitions? In the past, we usually meant the best time to drink coffee after roasting, but today's freshness also takes into account the process of raw beans from picking to refining, which is particularly important in the "third wave of coffee"-traceability. After the raw coffee beans are processed in the farm, the raw coffee beans are sold and transported by many international trade raw bean merchants, and then arrive at the coffee roasting factory or their own roasting cafe to be roasted, and finally bought and even brewed and drunk by consumers. In the process, it can be simply summarized into three stages, each stage will affect the quality of coffee beans.

The first stage: the freshness of raw beans

Whether raw coffee beans leave the factory after various treatments such as sun exposure, water washing, semi-washing and honey treatment, raw beans will maintain a dry condition of low water content (about 12%). In this condition, high-quality coffee beans are easier to preserve, generally packed in sealed bags, and then shipped to local foreign trade merchants after packing in sacks, but the following conditions will still lead to problems with the freshness of raw beans.

1. Rough treatment and pollution

Coffee is actually a kind of fruit, which must be removed by various treatments and treated into hard raw beans, otherwise it will rot. However, not every coffee farmer is well trained in how to handle coffee, and many coffee farmers have poor equipment or backward production conditions, resulting in rough and unscientific coffee processing.

For example, if there are differences in grading, size and maturity of coffee fruits, there may be differences in water content with the same drying time, and if the water content of some raw beans is too high, they may be close to decay as soon as they leave the factory, and mix with good beans. A pot of fine goods that are ready to kill you.

Or in the drying process, because the environment is not clean, other substances around the coffee beans cause pollution. Such as animals, wind and dust, dirty water, etc., may make coffee beans infected with strange taste and bacteria, resulting in accelerated decay of raw coffee beans, which is not fresh as soon as it leaves the factory.

two。 Delivery and warehousing defects

Although the processed raw coffee beans are dry and slow to oxidize, they can be kept fresh. However, linen bags are not completely moistureproof, if coffee beans are exposed to moisture in the process of transportation or warehousing, it will lead to raw beans corruption or accelerated oxidation, even if special plastic bags are added, there is still a risk of breakage and cracking, at this time the good taste of coffee beans will volatilize in the air and may bring uncomfortable mildew or stench.

And the general shipping time and storage time is actually not short, especially the lower grade coffee raw beans, often the quality control of storage is very poor, in fact, how many beans have been sacrificed during this period, in fact, it is really unknown. However, because it is used as cheap commercial coffee beans, it is naturally impossible to use good storage equipment, and those who are sacrificed are consumers who do not know why.

3. Hoarding and keeping it for too long

Even if the transportation or warehousing is normal, the coffee beans are still oxidizing at a slow rate, so if the coffee is placed in the cargo hold for too long for various reasons, such as unsmooth shipping, unsalable, production waiting time and so on, it will still reduce the freshness of raw coffee beans.

Coffee is a futures and will indicate the year of production. Generally speaking, it will be cross-year, at the beginning of the year is to drink last year and the year before last batch, slowly into last year and this year batch. For example, it is common to drink 2016-17 batches at the beginning of 2018, and 2017-18 batches will not be available until a few months later. There are also some coffee raw bean manufacturers who do not use the new year score as the batch standard, for example, 90 + is based on a single year as the batch standard.

As can be seen from the above, if the coffee bean merchants hoarded the used goods of the past, they may have been stored for a long time from 3.4 years ago, then even if such raw coffee beans are properly stored, their flavor will certainly be different from those of fresh batches of raw beans. As for the difference, it depends on the level of storage and the speed of oxidation of the beans themselves. Aged beans are another topic-it's well-managed coffee ripening, but not all coffee beans are suitable for aging.

Boutique coffee shops often prefer to have fresh batches. After all, the time is terrible, and it is unknown how much the flavor of the coffee will be taken away. Of course, the roaster does not want the raw beans they buy to be in a situation where the flavor is only 50%. This is the act of throwing money into the water.

It can be seen from the above that raw beans should be fresh, and there can be no mistakes in production, transportation and storage, otherwise coffee beans will have doubts that they are not fresh.

But the question is, how can the average consumer test the freshness of raw coffee beans?

The answer is: almost nothing can be done.

Once the stale beans have been baked, it is almost impossible to see with the naked eye whether they are fresh or not. You can only tell by drinking-coffee baked from shoddy expired beans can bite the throat and be bitter for no reason. To make matters worse, if you add a lot of sugar milk, mix the flavor (such as vanilla coffee), or after chemical treatment (such as instant, three-in-one), even the fairy's tongue will not be able to taste whether he is fresh.

Although it is invisible to the naked eye, we can at least use deletion to get rid of the most exaggerated parts-coffee beans that are cheap for no reason. Next, we will offer some more possibilities to find some fresh guarantees for us.

A boutique coffee shop is a shortcut to fresh coffee

Generally speaking, there are coffee shops that sell manor coffee and are in principle the most likely to drink the freshest coffee. The main reason is that the value of manor coffee deserves to be taken seriously by everyone in the supply chain.

The output value of a well-known coffee farm is almost dozens or even more than a hundred times higher than that of ordinary coffee farms. These differences are mainly reflected in:

♦ coffee farmers will concentrate the complete, mature and most attractive coffee cherries.

♦ picks according to maturity when harvesting, and removes incomplete and immature fruits for higher unit price.

♦ uses high-level, advanced technology and machines for processing, and even delivers it to professional processing plants.

♦ takes the best beans to the competition, or delivers them directly to the buyer for a cup test to get the best price. If you get the ranking, only the same batch of coffee beans can be named to avoid the problem of making up the number.

♦ suppliers will pay special attention to the quality of freight, even vacuum packing

♦ 's fresh manor coffee is very popular, so it is unlikely to go through long storage.

Roasters in ♦ 's own boutique cafes basically filter the source of goods.

♦ 's own baked cafe doesn't store too much stock.

Although the price is very tacky, but a penny of goods is also the iron rule of quality, after all, there are profitable people will want to take good care of. The editor is not saying that it is absolutely necessary to buy expensive coffee. Drinking a cup of 30-yuan coffee in a boutique coffee shop (provided that the price is not inflated) can basically guarantee the quality of raw coffee beans. If you think it is still a little expensive, you can buy beans and brew them yourself. It's fresh and economical.

In the next article, we will continue to talk about fresh coffee-ripe beans, please look forward to it!