Key Considerations for Selecting Packaged Coffee Beans _ Packaging Options for Bagged Coffee Beans _ Recommended Packaged Coffee Beans

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Freshness is the Life of Coffee - How to Determine the Freshness of Bagged Coffee Beans

There are three steps: smell, look, and peel.

Smell

Bring the coffee beans close to your nose and take a deep sniff. Can you clearly smell the aroma of the coffee beans? If so, it means the coffee beans are fresh enough. On the contrary, if the aroma is weak or has already developed a greasy smell (similar to the taste that appears when peanuts or nuts are left for too long), it indicates that these coffee beans are no longer fresh at all.

No matter how much effort you put into grinding and brewing such coffee beans, it's impossible to brew a good cup of coffee.

Look

Pour the coffee beans onto your hand and spread them out to observe. Confirm the origin and variety of the coffee beans, and also check whether the coffee beans are evenly roasted.

Peel

Take a coffee bean and try to peel it open with your hand. If the coffee beans are fresh enough, you should be able to peel them open easily, and there will be a crisp sound and feeling. If the coffee beans are not fresh, you'll find that it seems to require a lot of effort to peel open a single bean.

Peeling open coffee beans also allows you to observe another important point: you can check whether the heat during roasting was even. If even, the color of the bean's outer skin and inner layer should be the same. If the surface color is obviously much darker than the inner layer's color, it indicates that the heat during roasting might have been too high, which will also affect the aroma and flavor of the coffee beans.

Purchase Considerations for Bagged Coffee Beans

When starting to buy coffee beans, first choose a prosperous coffee shop for purchase. The freshness of roasted beans is the life of coffee, so choose a shop that stores fresh coffee beans in a clean warehouse without residual oil from old beans, without direct sunlight, and without high temperatures around. Also, buying from shops that roast their own beans and take pride in their aroma is a good method.

When buying roasted beans, you can specify beans with a crisp taste. If you want to drink something with a slightly sour taste, beans with strong bitterness are better, or you can directly tell the staff to select according to your preferences.

When having the shop grind after purchase, be sure to inform the shop manager about the brewing equipment you use, so they can grind according to those tools (such as electric coffee makers, filters, paper, syphons, etc.).

When buying canned coffee powder in supermarkets, choose based on the labels (type of beans or flavor tendency) according to your own preferences.

Secrets to Coffee Bean Storage

Roasted coffee beans are easily affected by oxygen in the air through oxidation, which causes the contained oils to deteriorate and aromas to volatilize and disappear. Temperature, humidity, and sunlight further accelerate deterioration.

Especially decaffeinated coffee beans that have undergone multiple treatments oxidize even faster. Therefore, to maintain the aroma and quality of coffee, how to package and store coffee beans becomes a major consideration.

After roasting, coffee beans produce carbon dioxide equivalent to three times their volume. Therefore, the most important aspect of coffee packaging, besides avoiding contact with air for oxidation, is handling the carbon dioxide produced by the coffee beans.

Gas-Inclusive Packaging

This is the most common packaging, using empty cans, glass, paper bags, or plastic containers to package beans and powder, then adding lids or sealing packaging. It has low preservation quality, and because it's constantly in contact with air, it needs to be consumed quickly, with a drinking period of about one week.

Vacuum Packaging

The packaging container (cans, aluminum foil bags, plastic bags) has air removed after filling with coffee. Although called vacuum, in fact at most 90% of the air is removed, and since the surface area of coffee powder is larger than that of coffee beans, even the remaining small amount of air can easily combine with the powder and affect the flavor.

Gas-Filled Packaging

A pinhole is designed on the metal bag. After filling with coffee, inert nitrogen is filled in, squeezing the carbon dioxide in the bag out through the pinhole. This method is more common, but after all the gas is expelled, oxygen silently re-enters the bag through the pinhole.

Gas Absorbent Packaging

Absorbents made from deoxidizers and decarbonizers are placed in the packaging bag. The air in the package can be easily absorbed, and the carbon dioxide produced by the coffee can also be absorbed, but the disadvantage is that the coffee's aroma is also absorbed.

One-Way Valve Packaging

This is currently the most ideal external coffee packaging, all packaged in bean form rather than powder form. It's similar to pinhole metal bags, but the difference is that gas inside the bag can be expelled through the pinhole, while the one-way piston prevents oxygen outside the bag from entering inside.

Coffee manufacturers immediately cool and package the beans after roasting, and fill the bag with nitrogen to expel gas from the bag. Although this packaging method is ideal, the materials are expensive and costs are high. Currently only selected coffees from large companies use this packaging method.

Coffee beans, those small dark brown beans that seem ordinary, actually have considerable knowledge involved at every stage.

Coffee Purchase Considerations

When purchasing coffee, pay attention to its packaging method, because coffee releases more than three times its own volume in carbon dioxide (CO2) after roasting. If coffee beans continuously contact with air, it will accelerate fat oxidation and cause the coffee to lose its delicious taste. Using sealed packaging can easily be damaged by the expansion of carbon dioxide inside the bag. Nowadays, most packaging first punches a hole in the packaging bag, then sticks a plastic patch over the hole. When the pressure of carbon dioxide release is just enough to push this patch open, it springs back to cover the hole and prevent air from entering. The cost of this method is not high, so most merchants use this packaging for coffee beans, but the frustrating thing is that due to the simple structure, just using adhesive, it's more likely to fall off, and at the moment the plastic patch springs back, a small amount of air still enters.

Currently, the most effective method is filling packaging with special patented one-way exhaust valves, which can release the carbon dioxide produced by coffee from the inside while preventing invasion from external air. The function of the exhaust valve is to use high temperature and pressure to seal it firmly inside the bag. Although the cost of this high-pressure sealing machine and exhaust valve is relatively high, it is currently recognized as the most ideal preservation method, allowing you to taste freshly roasted coffee anytime, anywhere.

To maintain the freshness of coffee, you can decide based on personal consumption, with a purchase quantity of about half a pound (around 200 grams) at a time. The storage method is to isolate from light, high temperature, and moisture. Due to climate factors, Taiwan has high humidity, making it prone to flavor changes and deterioration during storage. After purchase, you need to squeeze the air out of the bag and quickly put it in a sealed container or wrap it in newspaper for storage. After opening the package, the storage period for coffee beans is about one week at room temperature and about half a month in the freezer; for coffee powder, about three days at room temperature and about one week in the freezer.

Bagged Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's freshly roasted single-origin bagged coffee beans have full guarantees in both brand and quality, suitable for brewing with various equipment. More importantly, the cost-performance ratio is extremely high. A half-pound bag of 227 grams costs only around 80-90 yuan. Calculating based on 200ml per cup of single-origin coffee with a powder-to-water ratio of 1:15, one package can make 15 cups of specialty coffee, with each cup costing only about 5-6 yuan. Compared to cafes selling for dozens of yuan per cup, this is considered extremely cost-effective.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roasting shop in Guangzhou with a small storefront but diverse bean varieties, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans, while also providing online store services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473