Coffee Q&A

Your Questions - My Answers

Hey everyone, I asked on Twitter for your most pressing coffee questions, and I’m here to answer them. We’re covering everything from coffee methods to why Starbucks coffee tastes like burnt pennies.

The Shelf Life of Coffee

@bowtiedsurvivalist asked a great question about the storage life of coffee. He has his own substack on prepping (Not a doomsday prepper!), and how to store food, water, equipment in case of everything from a weekend without power to a natural disaster, give him a follow and a subscribe, especially if you already follow @bowtiedfarmer and learning to grow your own food.

We’ll break the shelf times out based on grounds, roasted, and unroasted coffee.

Grounds

These have the shortest shelf life of the bunch, as the ground coffee is the quickest to degas and oxidize. As short as a few days before it goes stale, I would consider anything over a day old to be totally oxidized and the flavor profile to be absent. I wouldn’t recommend purchasing or storage of pre-ground coffee at all.

Roasted Whole Beans

This is your more typical purchase at the grocery store. Whole beans are stored in bags with one way valves to let the CO2 escape but prevent oxidization. This is why I recommend moving the coffee to an airtight container to slow the rate of oxidization.

These coffee beans are best used entirely within 1 month of roasting, but no sooner than 48 hours from roasting, especially espresso.

There’s a certain balance of oxygen to CO2 that needs to be in roasted coffee, hence why we do “blooming” process when we brew coffee, a small amount of water to open up the coffee and let the CO2 escape.

I wouldn’t recommend freezing either, as results are mixed, and coffee is highly porous, so it will take on that “freezer taste” pretty quickly. And low temps like that are too harsh on the beans anyway.

Green Unroasted Coffee

This is your best bet for long term storage. Green coffee doesn’t need to retain CO2, that comes after the roasting, so if coffee is stored properly, it can last for months.

Coffee beans are porous and hygroscopic, meaning they easily absorb aromas and moisture. Using a food ready airtight container to prevent aroma leeching with your best method of storage.

Longevity for unroasted coffee uses a simple formula. 60% humidity and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. At these temperatures, green coffee can stay good for up to 12 months on average.

Autist’s Note: Coffee can take multiple months to arrive from the plantations, up to 3 months from Central and South America, and 8 to 12 months from Africa. Plan accordingly which grower you order from if storage is your goal!

Is Coffee Gluten Free?

Short answer yes. Long answer no.

At no point in the process do whole beans come into contact with gluten, not at the plantation, roaster, or when bagged. I cannot say the same for flavored or cheaper coffee, but smaller roasters do not mix lines. Black coffee is entirely gluten free.

Why don’t coffee roasters include a gluten free certification? Because the process is expensive, and they do not control the entire line of production 99% of the time. By placing that label on themselves, they open themselves up to lawsuits that could devastate an industry with an average margin of ~10%.

If you a gluten intolerant, this becomes a risk management decision, and this is not medical advice. But I would look for a small batch, roast to order company to reduce my personal risk. You can always call them and ask, but don’t put the risk on them, please ask for your own risk management.

I repeat, this is not medical advice, you know your body and risks best. I am a cartoon St. Bernard on the internet.

What’s my take on Kirkland Brand Coffee?

I avoid any grocery store coffee, because of lack of freshness.

Think about the logistics. Coffee is roasted, then shipped on a pallet to a distribution center. From that distribution center (assuming there are healthy Toyota-method supply lines, let’s assume 1 week before arriving on the shelves), it takes a day or two to travel, and be unloaded. From there the coffee sits in the back room until it’s rotated in, and sits on the shelf till it’s expiry date.

What’s the expiry date? Three months after roasting. That’s right. You could be buying three month old coffee at the grocery store. I’ve seen coffee with nine months to a year before expiry, especially cheaper brands.

There’s a reason Costco coffee is dark and burnt, it’s to conceal the staleness under a blanket of burnt pennies.

This is why I stress roast to order. Avoid being scammed.

Bulletproof Coffee, yay or nay?

Nay. Just drink black coffee if you’re on Keto.

BowTiedOx doesn’t prefer Keto outside of a few circumstances anyway. Don’t get caught in the dopamine rush of being trendy and finding a “special drink”. It’s cope for being miserable and not having a proper fitness system in place.

Grind Size, Temperature, Steep Time

I’ll cover basic principles here, as each brewing method is unique and uses it’s own basic ratios that can be modified as you experiment.

The larger the ground size, the longer the steep time. Espresso has a short brew time of 30 seconds, cold brew takes 12 to 24 hours. French press, drip, and pour overs have a longer brew time of 5-7 minutes ideally, and used a breadcrumbs size ground.

Temperature, for anything hot and not espresso (which you can’t control anyway), the ideal temperature is 200F, not boiling, not lower than 195. This has to do with how the hot water pulls out the oils and sugars from the grounds. Too hot burns them and pulls the acidic oils from the bean, to cool doesn’t pull enough of the flavorful oils out.

What’s a Good Starter Coffee?

It depends. What kind of brewing method are you using?

Espresso? I like a nutty/spicy/chocolatey medium blend. Fruitier flavors can get lost in the strength of the coffee. The nuttier flavor profile is more robust in lattes, cappucinos, flavored lattes in my experience.

For French Press, cold brew, or Pour over? A light roast single origin will not only put the roasters talents under the microscope, but will help retrain your palette to distinguish the flavors found in coffee.

What’s the Best Method for Brewing Coffee?

This is incredibly vague, and depends what you’re looking for.

Strong punchy coffee? Espresso. Want to taste the subtle flavors? A pour over.

I’ve covered most methods outside of espresso (see why below) on the substack already.

Why do Coffee Shops have Better Espresso Than I can Make at Home?

I was just talking to a barista about this in real life. In short, baristas have way more training than you do at home, and coffee shops keep a more consistent flavor profile due to volume. The water profile is consistent, the grind size is dialed in and not touched, fresh coffee is consistently rotated in, cleaning is often more detailed.

I personally don’t make espresso at home for these exact reasons on top of a few more. A good espresso setup is a few thousand dollars to get the same quality as a local shop. It’s also a pain in the butt because of all the prep work and cleaning that goes into making just one cup for yourself (Think about how many cups per day your local shop makes). It’s much easier and adheres to the time value of money (A dollar now is worth more than a dollar in the future). It’s my excuse to head down to my local shop and chat with my friends behind the counter as well.

You can do espresso at home, and make it well. Seattle Coffee Gear has been some of the OG’s in the espresso space for a while now, and do a much better job with reviews than I have access to equipment. I can look machines over from a technical specs perspective, but they actually test the machines to give feedback to enthusiats.