Fresh coffee scam! Fresh coffee = fresh coffee? You don't understand the tricks behind freshly ground coffee!

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With the further deepening of consumption upgrading, consumers are becoming more and more mature and picky, and quality instead of price has become the most important factor for some consumers. Consumers have more and more stringent requirements on the freshness of food, juice needs to be freshly squeezed, bread needs to be freshly baked, and coffee needs to be freshly ground. In order to distinguish between traditional instant coffee, instant coffee and other prefabricated coffee products, almost all the convenience store coffee and take-out coffee that can be seen all over the street focus on "freshly ground coffee." overnight, "fresh mill" seems to be synonymous with "fresh" and "high quality".

But is freshly ground coffee really the same as fresh coffee? Is freshly ground coffee really equivalent to high-quality coffee?

Many people know that coffee is also an ingredient and needs to be properly preserved and freshly used. Stale coffee not only tastes dull, but even produces ochratoxin if it is not well preserved, which is harmful to human health. From instant coffee in the first wave, espresso in the second wave to boutique coffee in the third wave, people pay more and more attention to the quality of coffee, and one of the key elements of quality is "fresh".

But what exactly is fresh coffee? Fresh raw beans, fresh baked or freshly ground?

Compared with instant coffee and ready-to-drink coffee in supermarkets, the "freshly ground coffee" advertised by some businesses can be called freshly baked coffee. But does this "freshness" refer only to the production process, or to the coffee itself? Is "fresh freshly ground coffee" fresh raw beans + freshly roasted + freshly ground coffee beans, or just do not know what season + do not know when to bake + freshly ground coffee beans? This is probably the most mysterious and tacit trick in the coffee industry.

Types and shelf life of coffee beans:

* unbaked coffee raw beans 1 Mel-2 years

* roasted coffee beans (for cooking Espresso) for about 3 weeks

* roasted coffee beans (other than Espresso) for 45 days

* ground coffee beans 5Murray for 10 minutes

Coffee beans must be preserved in a good environment in order to have the above life.

The retention period data is from the Coffee Taste Chronicles.

Coffee beans are fruit seeds, and there are many layers of flesh outside the seeds. Although the flesh is also edible, it is not a common method used by us. Coffee seeds are usually processed, roasted and ground to get the coffee we drink, and these three levels represent different levels of "freshness":

1. Fresh raw beans

Coffee is a crop, and coffee beans are made from the seeds of the fruit, so the freshness of raw beans will deeply affect the flavor of coffee. It is generally believed that only coffee beans produced in this season are fresh and tastier.

Once the coffee is harvested and processed, the best taste period of raw beans can last about a year in good condition. With the longer storage time, coffee beans will have less and less moisture, making coffee beans tasteless (except aged beans, cellar stored beans, etc.), and the flavor of raw beans will also be affected by external humidity and smell.

Coffee producing areas in the northern hemisphere usually have the main harvest season from October to March. Red cherries that can be harvested begin sporadically in early October but do not produce much. November-January is usually the peak of the season. So the harvest will basically be over the New year, and raw bean merchants will often mark '2018 Universe 2019' and'18-19'to tell you which season this is. Some people will wonder whether this is 18 or 19 and can't tell the difference. You should know why this sign is at this point. This means that this is the production season (season, not batch) harvested from the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2019.

So if the November harvest of coffee cherries after 2-4 weeks of treatment, drying, not in the place of origin for sale directly on board, after about a month of shipping, shipping date, customs declaration. If it goes well, it can be seen in China as soon as early January (but it usually takes longer because of different national conditions).

Good preservation of fresh raw beans is a basic requirement for a good cup of coffee. Usually, some large chain enterprises, in order to control the stability of quality and avoid the influence of international futures prices, it is possible to hoard relatively large batches of seasonal raw beans at once, but when to clear the inventory and when to change the production season, I'm afraid it belongs to the level of trade secrets. If you use coffee beans that do not know what season to produce, roast, grind and boil. I'm sorry, it has absolutely nothing to do with freshness and high quality.

two。 Fresh baking

Roasted coffee beans have a much shorter shelf life than raw beans.

There are two ways to simply measure the roasting freshness of coffee. The first is measured by aroma, which is one of the most important elements of fine coffee. If you take the aroma as the yardstick, you will find that the aroma will disappear in a few days, or even just one day. So if all you think about is aroma, it can be said that coffee is not fresh in a day. However, freshly roasted coffee is not suitable for direct drinking, because coffee beans emit a lot of carbon dioxide, resulting in the flavor of coffee beans can not be washed out. According to the depth of roasting, coffee should be brewed at least three days after roasting.

There is another measure: through carbon dioxide. Because the aroma and carbon dioxide are produced with baking, it starts ticking like a clock immediately after baking. From the point of view of carbon dioxide, the fresh problem will be more complicated, because in the cooking process, if there is too much gas will affect the extraction results, but try not to store for more than a month.

When buying ripe coffee beans, please look at the "baking date" rather than the "shelf life". If the packaging is not dated, it may be coffee beans that have been kept for some time. For some chain enterprises, due to material replenishment, inventory, logistics and other reasons, the "freshly ground" coffee beans used when arriving at the store may have passed one or two months from the baking date, if it is international long-distance cross-sea transportation.

A bean bag without a baking date may not be a good sign.

3. Fresh grinding

Coffee will produce a lot of aroma after grinding, which is why beans must be ground before brewing coffee, which will form a charming flavor of coffee. In order to grasp this good flavor, we must seize the prime time of 5-10 minutes after grinding and brew the coffee powder, otherwise it will be a pity for the aroma and flavor of this coffee.

"fresh grinding" this point, thanks to the unremitting efforts of large businesses and enterprises to promote, in the coffee circle and coffee lovers group is almost the existence of common sense. Therefore, it serves as a selling point to promote "pay attention to quality" and "professional production" of coffee.

However, as the saying goes, "30 years east of the river, 30 years west of the river". Now the latest idea in the coffee circle is that "pre-ground coffee powder may be better than fresh grinding!"

Last

At present, coffee brands in the market are vigorously promoting "freshly ground coffee", but do not mention the production season and baking time of the coffee beans used. This is because the beans of many brands of coffee are purchased and roasted abroad, and it takes four months for them to arrive in China, which does not add to the time taken from the port to the stores, which greatly exceeds the best taste period for coffee beans. Even for domestic roasted coffee brands, if their own inventory and logistics system are not perfect, the larger the scale, the more likely this situation will occur.

I am afraid that many consumers who like to drink coffee and pursue the quality of coffee have changed their concept by the word "freshly ground coffee". Everyone thinks that they are drinking very fresh coffee. after all, coffee is made by watching baristas, but brewing coffee is only the process, not the beginning. If you want to drink a cup of fresh coffee, the season of raw coffee beans and the time after roasting are also very important. Don't mistake it for fresh!

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