The Art and Craft of Coffee (7 page)

Buying Fresh Roasted Beans

Where can you buy green beans? Before the 1990s, consumers couldn’t. Commercial green brokers almost never sold direct to consumers, and those who did often sold them by 150-pound (68 kg) bags. Consumers who approached local commercial roasting companies met perplexed, even offended, roast masters who acted like a restaurant chef asked to sell a steak for someone to cook at home.

The Internet changed all of this, making it possible to find online sources for beans at a range of prices and sizes. Not sure where to start online? Search for award-winning green beans. Buy a few pounds (enough to last awhile and make shipping economical but not so much that you’re stuck if you don’t enjoy it). And remember that you want to use them while they’re still fresh. That’s the whole idea. Sign up for home roast coffee forums and become active. Word of mouth is a good way to find the good stuff. You know you’ve arrived when you find yourself setting an alarm for 2:00 AM so you can bid on some Kenya AA “Best of Cup” award-winning lots. Then you’ll know the real reason for caffeine. For specific places to buy green coffee online, see the “Resources” section in the back of the book, starting on page 168.

When buying already-roasted coffee beans, someone else chose the green beans and presumably followed the guidelines we just discussed. Make sure you check the roast (which we cover in
chapter 3
, “Coffee Roasts and Roasting”) because a coffee’s roast is crucial to its taste. So are its bean and roast freshness.

Beans are at their fresh flavor peak one to fourteen days following roasting. The first twenty-four hours after roasting is called resting. During this period, coffees typically are too fresh to be at their best. A coffee brewed immediately after roasting will foam up when hot water hits the grounds in the brewer due to excessive carbon dioxide escaping from the beans and impeding the extraction process (see “Brewing,”
chapter 5
). Truthfully, this is rarely a problem when buying already-roasted beans.

You want fresh beans whenever possible. The best way to buy fresh is to find a shop that roasts its own beans or roasts locally and receives regular deliveries. If you buy coffee anywhere else, how it’s packaged becomes important. Here are some freshness guidelines.

• Look at the label. Labels on fresh-roasted coffee beans should list their roast date. Beans should be used within two weeks of roasting, so be suspicious of a date more than two weeks prior.

• Ask questions. For coffee beans packaged without a freshness date, ask when the roasting happened. “This morning,” “Yesterday,” or even “Last week” are good answers. You don’t want to hear “This past spring” or “No idea.”

• Be wary of “Best by” dates. Some coffee roasting companies project their products’ freshness will last up to a year. Try to use this date to calculate the date of bean roasting.

• Seek out beans packaged in methods that prolong freshness. For example, one-way valve bags allow air to exit but do not allow air inside. Also, beans packaged while surrounded by nitrogen don’t stale as quickly because little oxygen enters the bag.

• Consider aroma (does it smell right?), storage (where and how is the coffee stored?) and turnover (how quickly does the store sell its stock?) when trying to find fresh beans.

Freezing Coffee Beans

Freezing coffee beans or grounds is controversial in the coffee industry. Adherents claim it prolongs freshness. Detractors claim coffee oils and aromas inside the beans cannot literally be frozen and that the condensation that forms on the beans as they go in and come out of the freezer cancels out any improvements. After many years of testing and analysis, I believe that freezing beans or grounds works well to give them additional shelf life—as long as they are appropriately packaged and removed.

Two innovations appear to greatly slow the green coffee-staling process: airtight containment and bean freezing. Airtight and opaque materials such as aluminum foil—not, at first glance, innovative but radically different technology in the world of coffee—block oxygen, moisture, and competing aromas. This allows for bean shipment alongside other products without concern that outside scents or moisture will damage the coffee. Tests conducted by a major U.S. importer have shown that aluminum barrier packaging results in beans with fewer off-tastes and less moisture damage.

Also keep roasted beans—those you roast at home or those you purchase already-roasted—fresh by freezing them. Freeze beans roasted at home immediately after cooling. Freeze already-roasted beans immediately after purchase. Say your favorite Internet roasting company offers free shipping with a three-pound (1.4 kg) bean purchase. Here’s what I would do:

1. Freeze a maximum of one-third of the package (or one week’s worth of beans) per container. If separated into three, keep the coffee in the packages in which it came. Leave one at room temperature for use.

2. Cover each bean bag you plan to freeze with a second freezer bag.

3. Squeeze out the air and seal tightly. Freeze.

4. Each time you remove a coffee bag from the freezer, let it come to room temperature before opening its outer bag or original package.

5. Once at room temperature, unseal package and use as you would fresh-roasted beans. Keep it tightly closed and set it away from bright light in a cool place, away from heat.

6. Do not refreeze.

Some hobbyists divide their beans into coffee pot–sized portions before freezing. This way, they can remove just enough to brew one pot without exposing the other beans to air and humidity. Use two bags per serving for double insulation.

Evaluating the Freshness of Roasted Beans

To test for freshness, grind some roasted coffee beans, place them in an open-drip filter, and pour freshly boiled hot water over the grounds. Fresh-roasted coffee will swell up from the release of carbon dioxide gas. Stale coffee will remain fl at throughout the brew cycle. Of course, such a test, by its nature, happens too late. We want to know before we buy our beans whether they are fresh.

You can roast green beans to light or dark roasts.

The Basics of Blended Beans

Bean blends combine the best qualities of one single origin with the different but complementary qualities of another, resulting in a unique, signature taste. In a perfect blend, the result is greater than the individual parts, causing a third unique flavor to emerge. Sometimes the word “distinguished” describes this signature taste.

Blending experts typically combine no more than three different coffees. Many commercial blends feature more than three coffee varieties, but this is mostly due to practical considerations such as bean sourcing and availability. Keep in mind, a large roasting company needs to distribute a large volume of coffee and once it promotes a blend needs to maintain its flavor consistency and cost.

The home aficionado has no such constraints. We can create a one-time perfect blend that we never have to recreate or mass produce. We likely care little if the varieties we blend are expensive. We aim to create unique, personal flavors. Leave consistency to others.

Starting from scratch on your own blend can be a challenge. Here are three examples of proven blends to give you a taste:

• Mocha-Java: One-third Yemen Mocha to two-thirds Sumatra Mandheling, all Full City roast

• Black and Tan: One-half Vienna Roast (dark roast) Colombian to one-half City roast (light roast) Colombian

• Proprietary Roast #1: One-quarter Kenya AA to one-quarter Guatemala Coban to one-half Brazil, all Full City roast

Crafting a Personal Bean Blend

To start crafting your personal blend, combine two varieties of brewed coffee you enjoy and see how they taste together. Use a yin/yang approach. For example, try pairing a bright Colombian coffee with a low-acid Brazilian coffee. Many types of satisfying combinations exist. Check out
chapter 1
for a list of regional traits. It’s a good place to create your short list. (It’s best to experiment using brewed coffee rather than beans. Then it becomes a matter of recreating that same ratio using coffee beans.)

Tweak your blend by changing the percentages of each coffee variety, or try blending half light roast and half dark roast of any two coffees, even two of the same variety. It’s a trade secret that one well-regarded specialty blend is actually a single-origin variety made from two roasts from two different Colombian bean regions.

Materials

Brewed coffee samples of each potential blend component

Coffee brewer (pick your favorite from
chapter 5
, “Brewing,” and follow instructions)

Thermal carafe for each brewed sample, to keep coffee hot

8-ounce (240 ml) measuring cup (one for each coffee)

Coffee cups or drinking vessels

Instructions

1. Brew each coffee sample and then pour each into a thermos to preserve heat.

2. Measure 5 ounces (150 ml) of each into individual measuring cups. Pour 3 ounces (90 ml) of one into a coffee cup and then add 1 ounce (30 ml) of another to the same cup.

3. Repeat, sampling until you reach your desired ratio.

4. When you get a cup you like, note its ratios.

5. Finally, mix roasted beans in identical portions. This should allow you to streamline future production runs of your blend by roasting the beans blended. Note, however, that several industry roast masters claim their blends must be roasted one variety at a time and that size, moisture, and other differences between their blends’ varieties change the flavors when roasted together.

Cupping

Coffee cupping is the process to evaluate coffee’s taste, the stop-and-smell-the-roses step in your development as a coffee drinker. Have you ever seen a wine taster swirling a vintage Cabernet in a glass and sniffing it before taking a tiny sip? Well, cupping is the coffee world’s equivalent.

And it has layers of flavor. It awakens taste buds on your tongue as it flows around your mouth. Coffee gets more flavorful as it cools. Where wine drinkers credit wine’s relaxing qualities for giving its imbibers more taste toward the end of a glass, coffee drinkers cite coffee’s stimulating quality as a flavor enhancer. That means the second cup is often tastier than the first.

A classic cupping operation uses tiny ceramic coffee cups, but rocks glasses, china, or glassware suit the technique as well. If cupping with others, you may wish to prepare separate samples for each participant. If you share, rinse your spoon as you cup. People who cup often obtain a special cupping spoon that is wide like a soup spoon, almost round in shape, with a snub nose.

I can’t wait any longer. Let’s get started.

Materials

Tea kettle

1 6-ounce (180 ml) rocks glass for each coffee sample

1 water glass per participant, for rinsing spoons 3 to 6 fresh ground coffee samples

Scale, to weigh coffees

1 cupping spoon per participant

Log book to score and describe the coffees

1 serving sparkling water for each participant, to cleanse palate between cupping, optional

Spittoon, such as a tall glass or bowl, optional