How Should Coffee Beginners Choose Quality Coffee Beans? Where Is the Best Place to Buy Coffee Beans?

How to Choose Quality Coffee Beans for Beginners

As a coffee beginner, one of the most perplexing questions you will face is: "How should I choose a bag of quality coffee beans?"

If you are comfortable with web searches, you would know to look the question up online, which certainly yields a plethora of answers, though wading through that pile of technical material can be confusing. Some of it even asks you to feel the beans in your hand and smell them up close. In a regular store, no one is going to let you open packages for a careful inspection. Yet nearly every source agrees on one point: coffee must be fresh to be good, the same principle that applies to most foods.

How to Determine Coffee Freshness

Generally, the most direct way to gauge freshness is the roasting date. Beans should rest for roughly a week after roasting before their quality stabilizes. Unfortunately, most supermarket packages don't carry a roasting date (understandably, nobody can predict when a bag will be bought, and if it sat on the shelf for two or three months, few customers would pick a bag roasted months ago). So checking the date is often not an option.

I once had the privilege of attending a class by Hong Kong's renowned barista Bruno Koo, who taught a very simple method: look at how plump the package is. We were usually taught that swollen cans or sealed packs should be avoided because the contents may have spoiled, while dented ones are harmless. With coffee, the rule is the opposite, a plump, swollen bag is the sign of fresh beans.

Does Swollen Packaging Indicate Freshness?

Why? Because roasted coffee keeps releasing carbon dioxide, and that release gradually slows over time. Freshly roasted beans give off large amounts of CO2, which puffs the bag up right after packing. The gas slowly escapes through the one-way degassing valve, and as the beans age they release less and less while the valve keeps letting gas out, so the bag slowly deflates over time. A plump package is precisely the mark of freshness.

The One-Way Degassing Valve

When buying beans, make sure the packaging has a one-way degassing valve. Roasted coffee continuously releases CO2, so the valve must let gas escape (otherwise pressure would build until the bag bursts). If a package has no degassing valve at all, best to skip it, the coffee may have been stale when packed. Why one-way? For the same reason as many other foods: coffee oxidizes on contact with air and deteriorates, so the valve vents gas outward but never lets air in. This is also why coffee should be consumed soon after opening, with the bag resealed each time you take beans out.

Where to Buy Beans?

Given all the above, supermarkets are the least recommended source: no roasting dates, and package fullness is an imperfect proxy for freshness. To buy good beans, visit specialty coffee shops instead. Many of them roast their own beans for customers to take home, and since retail beans aren't their main volume business, turnover is smaller and freshness easier to guarantee. Find a coffee you've enjoyed in-house, then buy that shop's beans to match your own taste.

FrontStreet Coffee is a roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but a diverse bean lineup, famous names and lesser-known origins alike.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

During roasting, three elements determine the final flavor and must be kept in check: acidity, sweetness, and bitterness. The darker the roast, the more bitter and heavy the cup; the lighter, the more acidic and delicate. For anyone chasing a balanced cup, medium-roasted beans are the best place to start.

FrontStreet Brazil Fazenda Rainha (Queen's Estate): If you dislike sourness and hate bitterness, reach for this lot from Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer. It's the local Yellow Bourbon variety, quietly sweet, and after medium roasting it shows aromas of creamy peanut, chocolate, toasted bread, and sugarcane. Great as pour-over, and just as good in a moka pot or espresso machine.

FrontStreet Strawberry Candy Geisha Blend: For a sweeter medium roast, the fruit-forward Strawberry Candy is the top pick. It stands apart from other fruity coffees by combining two celebrated origins: honey-processed Costa Rica and washed Panama Geisha. Roasted medium to highlight the best of both, it pours with orange-blossom honey notes and a rounded sweetness, lovely as cold brew, pour-over, or espresso, and refreshing from the first sip.

FrontStreet 2013 Natural Typica: A flagship of Chinese specialty coffee with the authentic character of Yunnan arabica. Medium roasting preserves its balanced, gentle profile, bringing out soft notes of nuts, brown sugar, black tea, and dried apricot. Works for pour-over, cold brew, or drip machines, at very friendly value.

FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1: Jamaica's Blue Mountains grow Typica, one of the world's renowned arabica cultivars, and the region's naturally privileged terrain, its naturally privileged terrain, are essential to Blue Mountain's famed balance. Roasted medium, it fuses acidity, bitterness, sweetness, and body into an elegant, inviting aroma, with chocolate, roasted nuts, cream, and caramel from the very first sip, a balance no other coffee quite matches.