Purchasing and Storing Coffee Beans

Purchasing and Storing Coffee Beans

Freshness is the life of coffee. How to determine the freshness of coffee beans?

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

Smell

Bring the coffee beans close to your nose and take a deep breath. Can you clearly smell the aroma of the coffee beans? If so, it means the coffee beans are fresh enough. Conversely, if the aroma is weak or has already started to develop a rancid 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 into your hand and spread them out to observe. Determine the origin and variety of the coffee beans, and also check if the beans are evenly roasted.

Peel

Take a coffee bean and try to peel it open with your hands. 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 considerable effort to peel open just one bean.

Peeling open coffee beans has another key point to observe: you can see if the roasting heat was even. If it was even, the outer skin and inner layer of the bean should be the same color.

If the surface color is significantly darker than the inner layer color, it indicates that the roasting heat might have been too high, which will also affect the aroma and flavor of the coffee beans.

Important Considerations When Purchasing Coffee Beans

When you start selecting coffee beans, first choose a thriving coffee shop for your purchase. The freshness of roasted beans is the life of coffee, so choose a shop with a clean storage facility for fresh coffee beans that has no residual oil from beans and no direct sunlight, and the surrounding area is not high-temperature. It's also a good method to buy from shops that roast their own beans and take pride in their aromatic quality.

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

When having the store grind the beans after purchase, be sure to inform the manager about the brewing equipment you'll be using, so they can grind to match those tools (such as electric coffee makers, filters, paper, syphons, etc.).

When buying canned coffee powder in supermarkets, choose products with clear labeling (such as bean types or flavor tendencies) according to your own preferences.

Secrets to Storing Coffee Beans

Roasted coffee beans are easily affected by oxygen in the air, which causes oxidation. This deteriorates the oils they contain, causes the aroma to volatilize and disappear, and temperature, humidity, and sunlight further accelerate this deterioration.

Especially for decaffeinated coffee beans that have undergone multiple processing steps, oxidation occurs even faster. Therefore, to maintain the aroma and quality of coffee, how to package and store coffee beans becomes a sophisticated science.

After roasting, coffee beans produce carbon dioxide equivalent to three times their volume. Therefore, the most important aspects of coffee packaging are not only avoiding contact with air for oxidation but also handling the carbon dioxide produced by the coffee beans.

Gas-filled Packaging

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

Vacuum Packaging

The packaging container (cans, aluminum foil bags, plastic bags) has the air removed after filling with coffee. Although called vacuum, in reality, it removes at most ninety percent of the air, 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 in the metal bag. After filling with coffee, inert nitrogen is injected, forcing the carbon dioxide in the bag out through the pinhole. This method is relatively common, but once all the gas is expelled, oxygen silently enters the bag through the pinhole.

Gas Absorber Packaging

An absorber made from deoxidizing and decarbonizing agents is placed in the packaging bag. The air inside the package can be easily absorbed, and the carbon dioxide produced by the coffee can also be absorbed, but its disadvantage is that the coffee's aroma is also absorbed.

UCC Aroma Packaging

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

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

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