A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROASTED COFFEE FRESHNESS
Fresh roasted, specialty coffee was a rebellion and response to the low quality, pre-ground, packaged in a tin, sitting on the grocery shelf slowly getting stale coffee. Once you open the can, oxygen immediately begins to decay that ground coffee, resulting in a stale, lackluster cup of brew. The pre-ground grocery coffee always smelled better than the way it tasted.
Fresh roasted, specialty coffee was also a response to the first roasting companies and cafes born in the late 60’s and early 70’s selling fresh roasted, whole bean coffee that was relatively better quality than the canned stuff at the grocery store, but roasted very dark and still abided by the same freshness standards of the canned grocery coffee.
The approach to coffee back then wasn’t much different than a store bought pasta. You bought your coffee, put it in your pantry and brewed it until you were out and then bought more (coffee, not pasta). On some level, there was an understanding of when a coffee would become stale, but if you didn’t have the knowledge or understanding of what was happening, it wasn’t important and honestly, you may have enjoyed the stale coffee (my mom certainly didn’t discern either way). Specialty changed our relationship to fresh coffee and why it is important.
From the mid-to-late 70’s into the 80’s, specialty coffee was born and roasted coffee freshness, although talked about before, was becoming an important element to how we market delicious coffee. There was research and development happening that showed evidence that coffee just tasted better the sooner you brewed it after being roasted. And it was becoming evident that pre-ground coffee was certainly going to go stale very quickly, and grinding your coffee right before brewing was preferable to maintain the full flavor spectrum of your coffee.
Although companies like Peet’s and Starbucks started these conversations on freshness, it wasn’t until the 90’s that we saw the specialty coffee industry shift. Companies like Intelligentsia, Stumptown and Counter Culture started a narrative that was couched in truly fresh coffee being an ideal for deliciousness. They brought the same information but with a new lens: fresh roasted coffee (with a roasted on date printed on the bag), metrics for how soon you should brew and how long the coffee will be fresh (oftentimes seven to thirty days from roast), and how elevation, variety, and origin can affect your perception of flavor. It was a coffee renaissance.
From there you had the birth of many other coffee roasters all over the world, all of whom subscribed to some version of the same philosophy. Drink fresh roasted coffee. Drink it as soon as you can. Buy it in small volume, so you always have fresh coffee (instead of purchasing in bulk and allowing your coffee to go stale). Store it in an airtight container in a dark, dry place (not the freezer).
STRANGE BIRD COFFEE: APPROACH TO FRESHNESS
Many of the early adopters of specialty coffee packaged their coffee in PLA lined Kraft bags. PLA or Polylactic Acid is a versatile, plant-based bioplastic derived from renewable resources like corn starch or sugarcane. Although it is made from plant based material, PLA is still a type of plastic and needs very specific conditions to become commercially biodegradable and/or recycled. Unfortunately, it is not a very sustainable product and is rarely processed in an ecological way.
Once coffee is roasted it will begin to degrade over time due to oxidation, but if put into an airtight container, you can stall the oxidation process significantly. Other factors that can diminish coffee’s quality are light and moisture. This is why packaging coffee in plastic bags has become prevalent in the specialty coffee industry. Plastic is a fantastic barrier against oxygen, light and moisture, and extending shelf life, but it is also a poisonous pollutant. It’s a tough situation when as a coffee roaster you are sourcing expensive, high quality coffee that you want folks to enjoy, but you also want to ensure the coffee does not go stale, or rancid. And yet, not that long ago, pre-ground grocery coffee was being packaged in airtight tin cans or you could scoop your beans from an open bin at the grocery store into a paper bag, plastic free.
Strange Bird Coffee enters the chat.
The idea is simple: plastic free coffee. But, without plastic or even a tin can, how are we supposed to maintain freshness? Well, I call this ethical compromise. We roast our coffee fresh every week, package it in a plastic free, home compostable box (literally intended to fall apart and disappear with no affect to our bodies or the world) and ship in 100% recycled paper mailers. Our coffee is not packaged in any sort of plastic and is not airtight whatsoever.
At first, it seems our coffee may arrive diminished in quality or even stale. But there are a few other aspects of coffee at play here. When coffee is freshly roasted, it needs a few days to rest and de-gas. You see, the coffee contains a bunch of carbon dioxide gas (very normal, very safe) that is a result of roasting, and you really don’t even want to begin brewing it until it is anywhere between 3 to 5 days off roast. The gas does this strange thing where if you brew the coffee right away, you can taste the carbon flavor and the gas will make it difficult for the water to permeate the ground coffee and brew it effectively. I digress, but this is standard industry stuff.
So the ethical compromise is this: your Strange Bird Coffee coffee will not be packaged in plastic, it will be packaged in a compostable box, printed with water based soy ink, and shipped in paper mailers. Because we roast only once a week (for now), you will get a very fresh roast and by the time you receive your coffee, it will be ready to brew. If you subscribe, you will always have fresh roasted coffee. If you want to keep your coffee fresh for a longer period of time and want to stunt the natural oxidation period, throw your beans into a plastic free container; air tight is preferred. A ceramic jar, glass jar or metal tin work wonderfully. Store them in your pantry or cabinet free of moisture and sunlight.
I want to challenge the status quo of how we package our coffee and what freshness really means. I want to go back in time, when plastic wasn’t the norm, and scaling your business didn’t compromise the well being of our community and the planet. And I want to rewrite what coffee freshness is and how we can change a few of our consumer habits, and incentivize manufacturers to innovate towards a plastic free future.