What exactly is fresh coffee? why does good coffee emphasize "fresh roasting"?

It is often said that some coffee ripe beans bought online are not the latest baking date, feeling that they have spent money but can't buy the freshest coffee beans, and it is inevitable that they will grumble in their hearts. Some people who may know something about coffee know that coffee is also an ingredient that needs to be properly stored and used fresh.

Not only does not fresh coffee taste good, but if it is not well preserved, it can even produce ochratoxin (mainly produced by Aspergillus ochraceus, a widespread mold in nature, which can cause kidney failure in animals and renal tubular cell toxicity in humans), which is harmful to human health. From the first wave of instant coffee to the second wave of espresso coffee and now to specialty coffee, there is a growing emphasis on quality, and a key element of quality is freshness.

There are three ways to explain fresh coffee: fresh green beans, freshly roasted, and freshly ground. Fresh green beans are the blind spot for most coffee consumers, except for the case of home grinding.

So, what does it mean to be "freshly baked"?

Freshly roasted coffee is not suitable for direct drinking, because coffee beans will emit a lot of carbon dioxide, resulting in coffee beans will not be washed out of the flavor (or out of the roast flavor). This period of time we collectively referred to as the "bean cultivation period", after the bean cultivation period to the "best flavor period", the best flavor period, it is naturally "expired".

Bean growing period → best flavor period → expiration

It's simpler to see this way: as long as you can drink coffee beans at the end of the growing period and enter the peak flavor period, you can count as "fresh roast."

For example, according to the depth of roasting, most of our coffee beans will have a 4-7 day bean cultivation period, so if you are going to buy it back and open it immediately, the coffee beans about 4-7 days after roasting are naturally the "freshest"; even if you can drink it within the best flavor period, even if it is roasted for half a month and has been fully cultivated, it is also considered "fresh"; If there is food in the house, or if you plan to give it away, you can certainly choose freshly baked beans.

As for the "best phoenix flavor period", it can last for about half a month to a month after the end of the bean cultivation period. Some supplementary explanations will be made below.

So why is coffee freshness a mystery?

Because what we usually call "4-7" bean cultivation period or "one month" best flavor period is actually a very subjective topic.

Many professional roasters have their own criteria to set an average life span for coffee beans, and there are too many variables we can't control:

Coffee affects itself. Carbon dioxide emissions vary depending on the variety, altitude, treatment, and roasting of coffee beans, and neither the growing period nor the peak flavor period are exactly the same.

Roasting methods can also affect the life of coffee beans. The heating method and roasting method of the roaster will also change the characteristics of the coffee, which will eventually lead to differences in the green period or the best flavor period of the coffee.

So even if it's the same bean, different bakeries have different standards for freshness. There may also be more extreme cases: some beans can enter the best flavor period the next day after baking, but the flavor will be seriously lost in just half a month; some coffee beans will be hard to grow for half a month before the flavor will be fully expressed, and then a month will not become too bad...

Source: JasDaily