Coffee in the TEOTWAWKI

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You wouldnt think so but coffee roasting stinks to high heaven!!!! It smells like you're roasting fresh grass clippings.
And it's messy as hell!!! You gotta have a shop vac handy to suck up all of the fine skins that come off the beans.
Which is why I roast outside now - the chaff just blows into the yard. But the smoke is really not that bad until you get into the darker roasts if you have a good exhaust fan on a range hood. It seemed like pan roasting was creating more smoke than my drum roaster is now.
 
Are you saying that all the cans of folgers and maxwell house I bought a year ago and stored unopened are no longer good? How long does the everyday ground coffee last if still sealed in the can? Weeks? I don't drink coffee, I just added it to our preps for those here that do. At what point (in weeks or months) will my coffee offend peoples taste buds? I know you won't be drinking it, but how "rancid" can it go? Did I just lose a couple hundred bucks on my covid coffee stash?
 
Are you saying that all the cans of folgers and maxwell house I bought a year ago and stored unopened are no longer good? How long does the everyday ground coffee last if still sealed in the can? Weeks? I don't drink coffee, I just added it to our preps for those here that do. At what point (in weeks or months) will my coffee offend peoples taste buds? I know you won't be drinking it, but how "rancid" can it go? Did I just lose a couple hundred bucks on my covid coffee stash?

The difference between ground coffee and whole bean coffee is that the whole bean coffee is bagged while it is still off gassing CO2 in a bag with a one way valve. The CO2 protects it for a while from going bad. Ground coffee is unavoidably exposed to oxygen before being packed. If they purge it with CO2 and then vacuum pack it, it's probably good in the can for a few months, and will only degrade slowly after that, especially if you freeze it.
BUT, once you open it, ground coffee goes rancid within hours of contact with oxygen. Whole bean coffee, days.
I noticed this decades ago. The first pot from a freshly opened can of Folgers tasted a lot better than later pots.
You could vacuum pack the rest of the can immediately after opening it. For my sisters, who don't have burr grinders, I vacuum pack small bags, like 4 ounces each, of ground coffee immediately after grinding and tell them to keep it in the freezer until opening the bags.
 
Some people, and my wife is one of them, can drink and even enjoy rancid coffee, although I now have her spoiled on fresh roasted coffee and she prefers the fresh roast. She can drink coffee that's been sitting in the pot for hours. You know that last inch of coffee in the pot at a truck stop that was made sometime in the early morning and it's now afternoon. Not me.
It's the aftertaste that tells you whether it is rancid or not.
Many many years ago, I sometimes wondered why coffee didn't taste like coffee candy. The coffee candy had no bad aftertaste and no unpleasantness. Just a nice clean coffee flavor. That's what my coffee tastes like every morning now. ;)
 
The truth about commercial coffee.
When you roast your own coffee, you get to see what the coffee looks like before it is roasted. And the appearance of the green coffee can tell you a lot about how it's going to taste.
This is what it should look like.
SiJVO62.jpg

Not necessarily that color, but the beans should all be the same color and close to the same size. When you start with good consistent beans, you can roast them consistently and evenly at any roast level.

But when the coffee is picked, it is not consistent.
WAu3TmJ.jpg

There are large beans, small beans, misshapen beans, insect damaged beans, light beans, dark beans (the worst), overripe beans and underripe beans. With coffee destined for specialty coffee shops or home roasters, they sort out all the undesirable beans and what do you think they do with them?
Throw them away?
NOPE guess again.
They don't throw anything away, they just mix them in with the beans going to Folgers, Maxwell House, Charbucks, etc.
The photo above was from a batch of Ethiopian Kembata that didn't get sorted properly. I called the supplier and let them have an earful and emailed that picture to them, and they were as horrified as I was. They are still trying to appease me. The last time I visited them in person (a few weeks ago) they asked me what coffee I wanted to try and gave me a bag for free.
I did not send the unsorted coffee back. Not because I wanted to drink it, but because I roast coffee for my brother in law and that coffee was perfectly suitable for him.
Why?
Because he likes dark roast. You see, this is the dirty little secret about commercial coffee and why 99.9% of it is roasted so dark - dark roast hides the defects. What they call "Medium Roast" is at the dark end of the medium roast spectrum, somewhere around Full City+ which is borderline dark.
I can't drink light or medium roasted coffee that looks like that - nobody can - It's awful. But roast it dark and burn off all the defects and nobody is the wiser.
So, in summary, while 99.9% of people are drinking coffee that starts out looking like this:
WAu3TmJ.jpg

I'm drinking coffee that starts off looking like this and paying less per pound for it than most of the 99.9%:
SiJVO62.jpg
 
I keep stocking up and stocking up on green beans with the hopes of being able to barter some fresh roasted coffee to coffee connoisseurs who REALLY want some good coffee...but we drink coffee so fast it's hard to stay far enough ahead of our own future needs, not to mention my daughter, son, sisters, brothers in-law and niece that also I roast for.

Green beans have a shelf life of about a year. I'm sure if you took extreme measures you could get them to last longer.
And you dont really need electricity to roast them,although it sure makes it easier.
Lucky for me my Wife isn't a coffee drinker.
She laughs at all of my coffee equipment, She calls it my coffee corner....dont mind the Sous Vide machine in the front.
DF8F73FE-C29E-4886-B4AA-DFB9A9CAAE84.jpeg
 
Which is why I roast outside now - the chaff just blows into the yard. But the smoke is really not that bad until you get into the darker roasts if you have a good exhaust fan on a range hood. It seemed like pan roasting was creating more smoke than my drum roaster is now.

I run mine right by the stove top vent that comes out of the range top.
It helps but it still gets a bit smokey.
I'll do my roasting when the Wife isnt around and I'll roast 3 or 4 lbs at a time.
The worst thing is waiting for the coffee to rest for a week before you can brew it.
 
Some people, and my wife is one of them, can drink and even enjoy rancid coffee, although I now have her spoiled on fresh roasted coffee and she prefers the fresh roast. She can drink coffee that's been sitting in the pot for hours. You know that last inch of coffee in the pot at a truck stop that was made sometime in the early morning and it's now afternoon. Not me.
It's the aftertaste that tells you whether it is rancid or not.
Many many years ago, I sometimes wondered why coffee didn't taste like coffee candy. The coffee candy had no bad aftertaste and no unpleasantness. Just a nice clean coffee flavor. That's what my coffee tastes like every morning now. ;)

I'll never forget the day I tossed my percolator into the camping box after I found out what coffee should really taste like.
Since then I've stopped using the perculator all together and just use a large insulated mug and a gold filter on top,kind of a quick and dirty drip coffee maker.
 
The truth about commercial coffee.
When you roast your own coffee, you get to see what the coffee looks like before it is roasted. And the appearance of the green coffee can tell you a lot about how it's going to taste.
This is what it should look like.
SiJVO62.jpg

Not necessarily that color, but the beans should all be the same color and close to the same size. When you start with good consistent beans, you can roast them consistently and evenly at any roast level.

But when the coffee is picked, it is not consistent.
WAu3TmJ.jpg

There are large beans, small beans, misshapen beans, insect damaged beans, light beans, dark beans (the worst), overripe beans and underripe beans. With coffee destined for specialty coffee shops or home roasters, they sort out all the undesirable beans and what do you think they do with them?
Throw them away?
NOPE guess again.
They don't throw anything away, they just mix them in with the beans going to Folgers, Maxwell House, Charbucks, etc.
The photo above was from a batch of Ethiopian Kembata that didn't get sorted properly. I called the supplier and let them have an earful and emailed that picture to them, and they were as horrified as I was. They are still trying to appease me. The last time I visited them in person (a few weeks ago) they asked me what coffee I wanted to try and gave me a bag for free.
I did not send the unsorted coffee back. Not because I wanted to drink it, but because I roast coffee for my brother in law and that coffee was perfectly suitable for him.
Why?
Because he likes dark roast. You see, this is the dirty little secret about commercial coffee and why 99.9% of it is roasted so dark - dark roast hides the defects. What they call "Medium Roast" is at the dark end of the medium roast spectrum, somewhere around Full City+ which is borderline dark.
I can't drink light or medium roasted coffee that looks like that - nobody can - It's awful. But roast it dark and burn off all the defects and nobody is the wiser.
So, in summary, while 99.9% of people are drinking coffee that starts out looking like this:
WAu3TmJ.jpg

I'm drinking coffee that starts off looking like this and paying less per pound for it than most of the 99.9%:
SiJVO62.jpg

I still like dark roast the best but roasting at home opened up a new world for me.
I started buying beans that were intended to be lightly roasted and you can really taste the undertones that you dont get with dark roast.
 
The truth about commercial coffee.
When you roast your own coffee, you get to see what the coffee looks like before it is roasted. And the appearance of the green coffee can tell you a lot about how it's going to taste.
This is what it should look like.
SiJVO62.jpg

Not necessarily that color, but the beans should all be the same color and close to the same size. When you start with good consistent beans, you can roast them consistently and evenly at any roast level.

But when the coffee is picked, it is not consistent.
WAu3TmJ.jpg

There are large beans, small beans, misshapen beans, insect damaged beans, light beans, dark beans (the worst), overripe beans and underripe beans. With coffee destined for specialty coffee shops or home roasters, they sort out all the undesirable beans and what do you think they do with them?
Throw them away?
NOPE guess again.
They don't throw anything away, they just mix them in with the beans going to Folgers, Maxwell House, Charbucks, etc.
The photo above was from a batch of Ethiopian Kembata that didn't get sorted properly. I called the supplier and let them have an earful and emailed that picture to them, and they were as horrified as I was. They are still trying to appease me. The last time I visited them in person (a few weeks ago) they asked me what coffee I wanted to try and gave me a bag for free.
I did not send the unsorted coffee back. Not because I wanted to drink it, but because I roast coffee for my brother in law and that coffee was perfectly suitable for him.
Why?
Because he likes dark roast. You see, this is the dirty little secret about commercial coffee and why 99.9% of it is roasted so dark - dark roast hides the defects. What they call "Medium Roast" is at the dark end of the medium roast spectrum, somewhere around Full City+ which is borderline dark.
I can't drink light or medium roasted coffee that looks like that - nobody can - It's awful. But roast it dark and burn off all the defects and nobody is the wiser.
So, in summary, while 99.9% of people are drinking coffee that starts out looking like this:
WAu3TmJ.jpg

I'm drinking coffee that starts off looking like this and paying less per pound for it than most of the 99.9%:
SiJVO62.jpg


"There are large beans, small beans, misshapen beans, insect damaged beans, light beans, dark beans (the worst), overripe beans and underripe beans".

I'm not laughing at your post I appreciate the information but I couldn't help but think of Bubba Gump when I started reading about the different kinds of coffee....I was thinking I bet they go good with coconut shrimp, fried shrimp, pineapple shrimp, barbecue shrimp, boiled shrimp, etc... 😉
I know, I'm warped..
 
Green beans have a shelf life of about a year. I'm sure if you took extreme measures you could get them to last longer.
Green beans are sometimes many months old when you get them. They haven't been sealed in anything, just stored in huge burlap sacks in a warehouse. They are good for up to a year like that.
My main supplier (CBC) tells on their web site the approximate date of harvest. The beans I'm roasting now were harvested in February and March, so they've been in the warehouse three or four months (which is relatively fresh). I've seen their warehouse...
I vacuum pack them in batch size portions when I get them.
 
Green beans are sometimes many months old when you get them. They haven't been sealed in anything, just stored in huge burlap sacks in a warehouse. They are good for up to a year like that.
My main supplier (CBC) tells on their web site the approximate date of harvest. The beans I'm roasting now were harvested in February and March, so they've been in the warehouse three or four months (which is relatively fresh). I've seen their warehouse...
I vacuum pack them in batch size portions when I get them.

Seems like 4 or 5 months is the standard time you'll get your beans.
Also found a link saying you can keep them for two years if they're properly stored.
Sounds like a year and a half is about as good as you can get when storing them.
Although I'd be willing to bet 3 year old beans would still be better than instant.
 
Lucky for me my Wife isn't a coffee drinker.
She laughs at all of my coffee equipment, She calls it my coffee corner....dont mind the Sous Vide machine in the front.
View attachment 16591
I see you have a Cuisinart grinder. I've read good and bad about them, what's your opinion?

I got an Oxo last year that is comparable to the Cuisinart, and have been pretty impressed with the quality for the price. My only gripes are that it has too much retention and doesn't grind as fine as my Capresso, which it replaced as my main grinder. The Capresso is my travel grinder now, LOL. The Capresso has been a workhorse for eight years and I figured it was time to retire is as a daily grinder before it wore out. It is probably not as consistent as your $500 single doser, but it will do espresso, and since the detent is worn out, it is infinitely adjustable LOL.
This is what I use to make my coffee, both at home and on the road (the wife uses a drip):
NiZwaWQ9QXBp
 
I see you have a Cuisinart grinder. I've read good and bad about them, what's your opinion?

I got an Oxo last year that is comparable to the Cuisinart, and have been pretty impressed with the quality for the price. My only gripes are that it has too much retention and doesn't grind as fine as my Capresso, which it replaced as my main grinder. The Capresso is my travel grinder now, LOL. The Capresso has been a workhorse for eight years and I figured it was time to retire is as a daily grinder before it wore out. It is probably not as consistent as your $500 single doser, but it will do espresso, and since the detent is worn out, it is infinitely adjustable LOL.
This is what I use to make my coffee, both at home and on the road (the wife uses a drip):
NiZwaWQ9QXBp

Dont really use it anymore since it wont grind coffee precisely enough for the Espresso machine or the OXO cold brew maker.
I just use the Rancilio burr grinder for all my grinding, it'll do more than a single dose. Just fill up the hopper and hold down the button.
I pretty much only make cold brew in the heat of the summer other than some Espresso on occasion and it helps if your grind is accurate and on the coarse side for the iced coffee,if you get a bunch of fine grounds it plugs up the OXO cold brew maker.

For drip coffee you cant beat the Technivorm MoccaMaster.
While it's a bit pricey it makes Great Coffee!!!
1654981995926.png
 
The Oxo does coarse really well, but doesn't go very fine. Not even close to espresso. With the Aeropress I used to grind fine, but now I have to adjust the brew time for the coarser grind from the Oxo.
I love the Aeropress because you have complete control over every variable. You can use anything from light to dark and espresso grind to French press grind in it by just adjusting temperature, brew time and dosage. You can even make cold brew in one minute.
It won't do true espresso, but you can get close enough to make cappuccino or Americano.
And it costs 30 bucks :D
 
The Oxo does coarse really well, but doesn't go very fine. Not even close to espresso. With the Aeropress I used to grind fine, but now I have to adjust the brew time for the coarser grind from the Oxo.
I love the Aeropress because you have complete control over every variable. You can use anything from light to dark and espresso grind to French press grind in it by just adjusting temperature, brew time and dosage. You can even make cold brew in one minute.
It won't do true espresso, but you can get close enough to make cappuccino or Americano.
And it costs 30 bucks :D

When I was talking about the OXO I was referring to the cold brew set up they have.
It's great and reasonably priced at around $50 bucks.
Set it up and let it sit overnight and you have a weeks worth of cold brew.
Havent tried the Aeropress,I'll have to look into it.
Did a little reading and it sounds interesting.

1654987459951.png
 

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