Why You Should Buy Whole Bean Coffee
A lot of people drink coffee. Simple fact. But many regular coffee drinkers aren’t starting their mornings off with the best possible cup of coffee, and a lot of folks don’t even realize it. There are many factors to this, one of them being poor brewing practices/method of extraction (see my previous Coffee Talk). The other, and key to this Coffee Talk, is the freshness of your coffee. It can make or break your cup of coffee, so the longer you can keep your coffee fresh, the better. So, what if I told you it only takes about ten to twenty seconds extra every morning to exponentially improve your morning? Yes, I’m talking about grinding up whole beans prior to each brew. The following is why you should always, always buy whole bean coffee.
Buying whole bean coffee rather than already ground coffee will significantly improve your entire coffee experience. The main reason being that the coffee remains fresh longer, thus prolonging the amount of time you have with the coffee to drink it at its best. The flavor you get from a particular coffee is a combination of hundreds of compounds. These compounds are already existing in the bean when it’s harvested and then are further developed through the roast. During the roast, the roaster is carefully crafting other key features of the coffee’s characteristics. All these compounds remain trapped in the bean and can stay there for a pretty long time if the bean remains intact. However, as soon as you grind the bean, you’re now exposing all that good stuff to the air and those compounds containing flavor and aroma profiles will quickly begin to dissipate. Key flavor notes could be gone within days if not hours, so just imagine the ground coffee on supermarket shelves that may be several weeks or even months old!
Coinciding with the fact that coffee off gasses in this way, is that this also is the best time to taste your coffee. You want to brew right after grinding up your coffee because you’re sort of catching these compounds escaping in the moment and capturing all those flavors in water. The coffee compounds are most soluble during the first few hours after grinding. As soon as the water touches the ground coffee you’re creating yet another set of reactions that will add to the flavor. These interactions between the coffee and these external factors I keep mentioning are really important to getting a complete taste of your coffee and when you have less fresh coffee these exchanges can’t occur properly.
The last part of why you should buy whole bean and grind it yourself is that you’ll have an overall better time making coffee every morning. The smell of coffee grinding is one of the best smells you can ever encounter. It’s a wonderful aromatic experience that’s a perfect way to start your day off. It’ll fill your kitchen with a wonderful concoction of scents that’ll make your morning so much better. All and all, the process of buying whole bean and grinding it yourself is pound for pound a much better bang for your buck if you’re looking to drink good coffee. If you’re already spending say $15-25 on a bag off coffee, why not make it the best it could possibly be?