"Yes, beans, because while I may be a coffee snob I am also a realist who trusts the science."
—me
"Coffee snob(noun): [One who has] a true epicurean appreciation for the fine art of all things coffee. This is far and above the myraid [sic] of lemmings who ritually congregate at the local Starbucks, trying like hell to appear hip and trendy."
—fugitive247
I must preface this writeup with a couple of statements. Firstly, yes, I am a coffee snob, and highly opinionated on the topic of coffee. Secondly, I have been on this journey for many years, have tried many, many coffees brewed in many ways, in a diverse set of cultures and places, and have talked to many, many people about coffee, many of whom are far more experienced and travelled than I. In short, I have experimented, I have learned, and am the better-off for it all. After years of learning, I don't pretend to know it all. That said, all together, I have developed judgements, whilst allowing for differing tastes. I do try to avoid being a dick about coffee, and I'm not trying to spoil your party or tell you your taste is bad, or that you're wrong. Even if one or both of those statements is true.
Coffee exists in many places, and methods of preparation and tastes have developed as it spread from Ethiopia and Yemen, through the Arabic world, into Europe and thence to the rest of the world, and from being a local and community resource into mass-produced commercial product marketed to the masses. What the likes of Starbucks tell us we want in our coffee is not what coffee began as, nor what is good.. As a result, I grow weary of talking to many people about their coffee gripes. I've written hundreds, possibly thousands of words here talking about my journey, and the art and science of coffee and how best to enjoy it. Read those, learn to grind your own coffee and only then talk to me about your issues or questions. Ikea sells a grinder, and most big-box stores will have at least one.
My preference is to avoid what commercial marketeers tell me I should be drinking (read: "what makes them the most money"). It's easier and cheaper for them to buy lower-grade, less expensive coffees and roast them dark to mask their shortcomings. It's more profitable for them to encourage you to buy milky drinks designed to mask the off flavours of their frequently disgusting roasts, as well as to encourage you to take your coffee to your car or desk in a paper cup, than provide a comfortable café experience (something that Starbucks must be blessing the Covid lockdown for enabling them to accelerate). Coffee marketing is not there to sell you a better cup of coffee, it's to persuade you to buy cheap coffees and believe that you have good taste. We've all bee manipulated in this way; it's certainly true of me before I went to Hungary and Italy and tasted actually excellent coffees for the first time, before I started watching and reading James Hoffmann and other coffee commentators and educators, and learning about what my coffee experience could be. It's taken experimenting with different roasts and roasters, trying dozens, maybe hundreds of coffees and several coffee brewing methods, not to mention grinders. I have become a snob, I admit it, and I am trying to not be a judgemental arse when discussing teh topic. Nevertheless, I've upset a few people because my vision does not align with theirs. I will not be deterred though, and will indulge in a mix of story, fact and opinion to try to broaden your horizons and hopefully have you enjoying coffee more.
Choosing a coffee
For many, possibly most people, choosing a coffee means indulging a set of prejudices. Let me explain. Someone whose family only drank dark and oily roasts may believe that is what coffee should be, that is the pinnacle of flavour. They go to the store to buy coffee, and look for dark, strong roasts. They take it home, brew it up and it's bad in some way, raging from being unbalanced or having indistinct, muddy flavours, to being overly sour, bitter or astringent. Allow me a side vent here; I've noticed that, especially in the US, a lot of people don't know what "bitter" or "astringent" are., Bitter is not the same as spicy ("that mustard I bought from you was too bitter!", and equally, a little fruity acidity in a specialty coffee does not make it "sour". I tire of having to explain these things. Anyway, on to the coffee choice.
You may note that I talk about buying beans. If you are still buying pre-ground coffee, I have no time for you, especially if you've read anything I have written here about coffee. The №1 thing you can do to get better coffee is to grit your teeth, buy a bloody grinder and buy whole bean coffee, grinding it just before brewing it. The reason is simple. Grind up coffee and you immediately expose a greater surface area to the atmosphere, resulting in oxidation of the flavour chemicals and staling of the natural oils. It will result in poor flavour, off tastes and, if you keep it long enough, something that has lost all its flavour characteristics. You'll lose all the flavour notes and be left with something that can only ever make bitter, harsh and dishwater coffee. Coffee should not taste of cardboard in other words. Garbage in, garbage out is not just about data, people. Buy whole beans and grind them. Fail in this and I will be unable and unwilling to help you. You've been warned; in the future, if you come for help or sympathy, my first question is going to be about your beans and your grinder. You may as well be buying instant coffee if you're not grinding your own beans.
Now we have that rant out of the way, let's go back and get you some beans. Coffee these days exists in two species, robusta and arabica. Robusta is the one most often grown for the Big Coffee commercial coffee businesses. It grows at lower altitudes, contains more of the bitter alkaloid substance caffeine, produced by the plant to fend off insects who would damage the plant. It's mostly farmed at huge scale, and the producers are less worried about quality than quantity. Additionally, some of the big buyers are not even buying the better grades of beans. Folgers, Nescafe and Starbucks are not interested in excellent quality coffee, just profit at the expense of taste. They roast it darker because it can mask some of the flavour defects. In fact, some of these companies even consider the subtler flavours of coffee an inconvenience, being more interested in consistency, even if it's consistently poor quality.
What can you do to avoid this? Look for some key phrases. "High altitude" is normally indicative of better quality. Coffee grown at higher altitudes matures more slowly, allowing time for complex flavours to develop in the coffee fruit (the "cherry"). Look for any information that tells you the buyers cared about this coffee. The variety, or how it was processed. If you're getting to try specialty coffee, look for "single origin", which means the beans are sourced from a particular area, co-operative or even farm. The buyers will often have visited the area to taste and select coffees before buying. The producers have taken more care of their crop and take pride in their product, and the buyers know and understand this.You may pay a little more, but I consider his worthwhile. Now, to roast level.
For many many years, coffee was darkly roasted, i.e. roasted for a longer time. This can have advantages, often tasting sweeter and having a fuller body, but it's at the expense of killing off the fruit acids and origin characteristics. At a certain point, all coffees start to taste the same when roasted to this level, like soaked burnt paper.
Here's where your journey of discovery could begin. Buy a coffee thats roasted less, a medium or eve a light roast. It took me too long to learn that light roasts have their own, very special place, being fruitier and generally less harsh. For the longest time I avoided them, to my shame, but I'm catching up; one of my favourite coffees right now is a light-roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, busrting with blueberry flavour and quite delicious.
Ignore much of the label
Unless you know someone who's critically tasted the coffee, the tasting notes on the label are at best little help and at worst not to be trusted, and only rarely are they of any value. I can't tell you how often I've been disappointed by reading the roaster's tasting notes. "Where's the black cherry I was promised? The cacao nibs?" These flavours may only show up during a side-by side tasting with other coffees, and rarely materialise in a single cup.
Even the roast level isn't always the best guide. One roaster's "medium" may well be a dark roast for me. Honestly, I really only look for a roast date, and generally the more recent the better. I do have the advantage of selecting my coffee from local, trusted roasters, and I know that I'm usually getting coffees roasted no more than a week or two before I buy them. Is this important? Yes, the longer coffee is kept after roasting, the more of the flavours will have disappeared or worse, changed; either by evaporation or slow chemistry. In some cases, the beans will have even gone stale, especially if the packaging is poor and allows air into the bag. A word of warning though: Most supermarkets don't treat coffee as they would a fresh food. They will treat it like packaged goods and have a "best before" date on the package. This is disingenuous, misleading, leading you to believe that a coffee roasted three or four weeks ago, with a best before date eighteen months off, is *fresh*. Personally, if I don't see a roast date I don't buy because I have no guarantee about its freshness. Even in good packaging, in time the aromatics will dissipate or be altered, and I'm unhappy with that.
Grocery chains are managed by people who don't seem to understand coffee at all. Many coffees aren't even marked with a roast level. Not that this is how you should be buying your coffee, but they seem to have erected so many barriers that the only way to buy coffee is to, well, buy it, take it home and try it. A lottery, but one that could well open you up to new flavours and experiences. In my not very humble opinion, best avoid stores and go to a local roaster or cafe. The thing about cafes is that you can try out to find a coffee you like, and they will often sell you a bag. Many cafes these days are attached to a local roaster; some even roast on-site. I'm blessed with two cafes in own attached to sizeable local roasters, so I have an advantage: I can walk in, talk to someone about what I like and have them do a pour-over to test a coffee out. I've discovered many new coffees this way, including the Nicaraguan that is a current breakfast favourite, and my current decaf too.
The important thing is to try something new, free yourself from the bonds that bind you to that inflexible dark roast or whatever. Folgers? Starbucks? Get out of here. Even Dunkin' Donuts beats them hollow.
Storing your coffee
As soon as you pop open your beans, a countdown timer starts. The wonderful chemistry that happened during and just after roasting will be replaced with a chemistry at odds with great flavour. Oxygen will change oils, your aromatic flavour compounds will escape, and even at room temperature, chemistry will be happening and the results may not be good. Light also accelrates staling, so store in a cool, dark place, sealed away from the atmosphere.
Much rubbish has been talked about storing coffee. "Keep it in the 'fridge"‽ Oh yes, a moist place full of other things that could make it smell bad. Whatever it's next to on the shelf is eventually going to get in that bag and smell it up. Leek-aroma coffee is never going to be good, trust me. Ground coffee will be unrecognisable as coffee within a week or so and even whole beans will eventually have Bad Things Happen in the fridge, so forget it. For the most part, whatever container it came to you in will be good if properly sealed and kept in a cool, dark, dry place. A bulldog clip will suffice to seal the bag well enough, or head out ad buy a sealable canister, preferably one that allows you to creat a partial vacuum. Amazon has dozens of types, even Target or Walmart has a decent selection. Ideally you want your beans to be kept away from oxygen and humidity. If you are lucky enough to have surplus bags of beans, hurl a bag into a Ziplock bag and thence to the freezer. This will slow down the staling process dramatically, and once you're ready to star drinking it, simply get it out, open up and grind them beans. Don't be tempted to put the beans back in the freezer, you'll only encourage water condensation and bad chemistry will happen. Once your bag is open, cool and dark will suffice to keep it for weeks.
How long to store beans? Green beans will practically keep forever. Roasted, for several weeks, provided you don't keep opening the bag. My favourite solution is to weigh out portions of beans into glass or other tubes which ca be sealed, ad you guessed it, frozen. Froze beans can still be easily ground.
One final thought on bags. You may well find a little plastic something with a opening on one side of your bag. This is to allow freshly-roasted beans to burp out any CO2 that will still be expressing. Why is it there? Especially whe you're making espresso, as soon as you add water, the beans will offgas relatively violently, resulting in a disruption to the extraction process. Even when making a pourover you may notice some foaming at the outset; this is why baristas and coffee geeks "bloom" the grounds to allow that CO2 to escape without disrupting the brew. The little valve (which is a one-way thing, only allowing things to escape!) enables that excess gas to escape the bag without creating pressure buildup. Science is great.
I have proof-read this and am sad to note that there have been (probably still are) many tyops. Most of them were missing capitalisation or Ns, so please, do let me know if you spot one.
$ xclip -o | wc -w
2330