I wonder if you have ever had such an experience. You purchased coffee beans that were roasted for a short period of time, and you couldn’t wait to take them apart to brew and taste them. You found that the extraction was very unstable and the flavor performance was not ideal. After a few days, I brewed it again and it tasted better. What was the reason? This article from Front Street will help you understand what “raising beans” means.
Coffee beans are too “fresh” and need to be cultivated
After purchasing the roasted coffee beans at the Front Street store, Front Street will recommend that you store them for a few days first, and use the roasting date as the initial calculation time. Medium-light roasted coffee beans should be aged for 4 to 7 days, medium-dark roasted coffee beans should be aged for 7 to 10 days, and espresso coffee beans should be aged for 10 days before brewing. This is because freshly roasted coffee beans often have a smoky flavor from roasting. Under the high temperature, a large amount of carbon dioxide gas is stored inside the beans, which will continue to be discharged after the roasting is completed. If you brew at this time, unstable gases will "scurry around" and affect the extraction of coffee. Take hand brewing as an example. When hot water is injected for steaming, the gas will form large bubbles and burst the powder layer, indicating that the coffee is exhausting and "breathing", and the brewed coffee is prone to have foreign flavors and a rough feeling.
When using an espresso machine to extract fresh beans, the finely ground coffee powder will be released under the pressure and high temperature exerted by the machine as the coffee liquid turns into golden foam. Excessive gas will not only hinder the contact between hot water and coffee powder, thereby reducing the extraction rate, but also increase the chance of perforation (channel effect), resulting in uneven extraction in the front and middle sections. By the time the gas is discharged, the powder cake has been overheated, leaving only a burnt and bitter taste in the back, and the taste of the coffee produced is often unsatisfactory.
So how to "raise" coffee beans?
Exhaust is a continuous process. If the coffee beans exhaust all the internal gases, it means that the coffee beans are no longer fresh and the aroma will naturally be almost gone. No matter how expensive the coffee beans are, if they are not fresh, the taste will be greatly reduced. Therefore, we should try to drink the coffee beans during their best tasting period. So how do we grasp the best period of growing beans?
You know, the darker the roast, the longer the heating time, the more carbon dioxide contained in the coffee beans, so the longer it takes to vent. Especially dark roasted coffee beans that have undergone second cracking expand to the greatest extent, and a large amount of carbon dioxide gas accumulates in the beans. Therefore, when we store dark roasted coffee beans, as the bean cultivation time increases, the gas will expand the outer packaging until it bulges, indicating that the coffee beans are continuously degassing. The purpose of raising beans is to "exhaust" the dryness and miscellaneous flavors in the coffee and bring out the original flavor of the coffee.
In fact, you don’t need to do much with the coffee beans you get. You don’t need to unpack them and put them in sealed jars, and you don’t need to put them in the refrigerator. As long as the original packaging is left in a cool, dry place, the coffee bag will be equipped with a one-way exhaust valve. When the coffee beans release gas, the packaging bag will bulge. The function of the exhaust valve is to prevent the coffee bag from breaking and maintain a balance between internal and external pressures. Then wait until the recommended bean cultivation period has passed before you can open it and taste it. Another reminder from Front Street, try not to squeeze out the gas inside. Due to the difference between the pressure inside the bag and the outside world, the coffee beans will accelerate the elimination of gas to fill the space. Of course, the aroma of coffee that we smell when we squeeze the coffee bag is actually the loss of flavor substances in the coffee beans.
Taking the coffee beans sold in Front Street as an example, Front Street will recommend that you grow medium-light roasted coffee beans for 4 to 7 days, while medium-dark roasted coffee beans will take about 7 to 10 days to reach the flavor stable stage. In order to ensure the freshness of the coffee beans, the coffee beans delivered by Front Street are all freshly roasted within 5 days, and usually can be received in 1 to 3 days. In this way, the coffee beans that everyone gets are almost within the best tasting period, and they can start studying how to extract them.
Why does coffee need to be “wake up”?
The Italian coffee beans used in most coffee shops are roasted medium to dark in order to present a mellow and balanced taste. In order to remove the unpleasant bitter taste of dark-roasted beans, allow the remaining carbon dioxide in the coffee beans to escape, and use the principle of oxidation to make the flavor more rounded and smooth, we will appropriately extend the beans' raising time and open the package to "wake up" for a few hours before use.
Front Street here recommends that medium-dark roasted Italian coffee beans should be cultivated for no less than 10 days, and the cultivated coffee beans should be exposed to the air for 3 to 4 hours before use. Front Street still wants to remind everyone about the details of waking up the coffee beans. Place the coffee beans in a cool, dry, dark, and non-irritating odor-free environment. Shake and stir the coffee beans fully every half an hour so that the coffee beans below can come up to breathe fresh air. Use as soon as possible after the beans are awakened. Use as much as possible and wake up as much as possible to avoid over-awakening the beans and losing the aroma components and flavor substances.
Can I brew coffee without “well-raised” coffee beans?
After the coffee beans have been roasted at high temperatures, there is still a smoke smell inside. If coffee beans that are not "well-raised" are brewed directly, there will be obvious exhaust during the extraction stage. The coffee is prone to be green, dry, not prominent in flavor, and has a vague and opaque taste. Therefore, Front Street believes that it is still very necessary to cultivate beans, so what if you really can’t help but want to taste coffee in advance?
There are two tips here. During the brewing process, steaming is the most important exhaust stage. We can extend the steaming process to release more carbon dioxide from the coffee. For example, our water injection process generally requires a 30-second steaming time. At this time, it can be extended by 10 seconds, that is, the second stage of hot water can be injected at 40 seconds.
There is another method. We can grind it into powder and place it in the air for 1 to 2 minutes before brewing. Grinding the powder increases the contact area between coffee and air, allowing the gas to be discharged more fully. It should be noted that not only carbon dioxide is volatilized, but also small molecular gases that affect the flavor of coffee, so this is why coffee needs to be brewed and drank as soon as possible after grinding.
Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account cafe_style)
For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat, WeChat ID: qjcoffeex
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
