Posted on 10/18/2009 6:18:51 AM PDT by GonzoII
Don't trust the expiration dates on supermarket coffee. If you're unsure of whether you're really getting fresh-roasted coffee for the best possible cup, use a zipper-lock bag for an overnight test.
If you don't want your coffee to taste like the last pot at an all-night diner, you can take a lot of steps to brew the best cup without spending a bundle. Unless you're roasting yourself, though, you're at the mercy of whoever's selling you your beans. If you're unsure the quality, or how long you've had them stashed in your cupboard, Cook's Illustrated has a good test:
(Excerpt) Read more at lifehacker.com ...
Has all information on roasting, beans, grinding, etc. that you need to start.
I have bought from them for years.
The key to that is to deterimine what they are linked to, if it isn’t a news source, and you can tell that from the content of the posting, then simply don’t click on the link. If people would do that these vanities that are made simply to increase the clicks someone gets on their blog, would stop, or at least slow way down.
Yup.
The best way to test old coffee is to drink it.
I'm very annoyed with them. There are several repeat offenders who use FR to drive traffic to their blogs. Very bad taste. I refuse to fall for it.
Where do you by your beans?
I mostly drink decaf, so we've found some favorites in a variety of online shops. In rough order of online patronage frequency: Coffeebeancorral, Burman, Coffeeproject, Sweetmarias, and some surprisingly good beans can be bought via eBay (e.g. Kona decaf, and Jamaica Blue Mountain).
Thanks for the info. I will look into this more. My preference is a dark roast.
Best beans for darker roasts are from Indonesia. I was a big dark roast Sumatra fan until I started experimenting with other beans from around the world. Dark roast will char the fabulous sweet and subtle flavors of many bean varieties. For example, it would be a near-crime to dark roast exquisite beans including Kona or Jamaica Blue Mountain.
Thanks, again!
:)
They have green (unroasted) coffee beans, too.
How do you roast your coffee beans?
I was really surprised to recently learn that in early day America, everyone bought green coffee beans which can last almost indefinitely, and then would roast some beans each morning in a cast iron frying pan, before grinding & brewing the coffee.
I never click on the link — if I want to learn more, I simply do a search IN QUOTES, (”...”) at google for about maybe 2 full sentences of the original post.
Then, IF there is a cached version at google, I might click on that to find out more.
Often, though, there are more interesting articles to pursue.
“Teaser” articles are irritating, but at google you’ll have a universe of possible clicks if you really want to learn more.
bump again
The best "blend" I've ever had was fresh roasted beans swept from the floor of a roastery.
I've heard it's a good idea to have a fan, hand held blow dryer, or a stiff breeze when roasting in a pot or pan to clear out the chaff. Roasting in a pan also requires constant stirring to assure an even roast. I understand the old hot air popcorn poppers can be altered for coffee roasting.
The higher tech roasters are nice because you can program the ideal roasting times, they move the beans and cool the beans quickly once you've reached the perfect roast stage.
I'm with all of you ... the blog pimpers drive me nuts and I hate to be teased to click on a thread only to find that I have to click through again to an unknown source to read the goodies.
However, and it is a substantial however, there was a post by the Admin Moderators a couple of days ago that stated ... I'm paraphrasing ... the internet has changed since FR was conceived and blogs are a very important part of the advance. We are to welcome bloggers and hope that they turn out to be good conservatives that will join our reindeer games.
Personally, I think that these blog pimpers are one of the reasons that fundraising has become almost permanent around here, but it is not my site and my opinions matter very little to the Powers That Be ... if it did matter much, half of the Orly threads would get nuked immediately (but that's another argument altogether).
Oh, well.
I've become very interested in coffee since learning that researchers reverses Alzheimer's Disease in lab animals via CAFFEINE.
I had no idea that raw/unroasted beans were substantially less expensive.
Thanks for all your tips & advice about roasting.
Oh well indeed!
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