Let It Rest

Lets be honest, we are obsessed with everything being fresh. Its been drilled into us everyday through marketing campaigns. Fresh fruit, fresh flowers, fresh gears, fresh is best yeh? Well in most things i would agree but when it comes to coffee being a little more patient can reap amazing result.

Why?
Because coffee straight off the roaster isn't finished yet. Roasting forces a lot of carbon dioxide into the bean, and the bean spends the next few weeks letting it back out again. That's degassing. Until it's well underway, the gas gets in the way of everything you're trying to do.

In the basket, it shows up as chaos. Too much CO2 and the water can't get an even hold on the grounds — it finds the path of least resistance, punches straight through, and you get a shot that gushes and a sour, thin cup sitting under a crema that looks impressive for about four seconds. You'll chase it with the grinder and never quite land it, because the problem was never your grind.

On a pour over, it's the dome. You've seen it. The bloom rises up like bread proving, the bed cracks, and the water runs off the sides instead of through the coffee. Our brew guide asks you to bloom for 30–45 seconds for exactly this reason. On a very fresh bag, even that isn't long enough.

So we rest it here first. Every bag sits at the roastery for a few days before it goes anywhere. That's deliberate. We'd rather hold onto it a bit than send you something that fights you on arrival.

Then you finish the job. There's a roast date on every bag. Count forward from it.

• Sunrise and Outlaw — roasted for milk, medium body. These come good around 10days to 21 days off roast, and they hold there comfortably for a while after.
• The light-roasted single origins — Hadeso, and whatever's running through Short Run ; are denser and give up their gas more slowly. Give them 14 days to four weeks, especially if you're pulling them as espresso rather than filter.

Fresh is a starting point, not a finish line. The date on the bag tells you when the clock started. It doesn't tell you the coffee's ready.

Don't take it too far the other way, either. Once it's rested, it doesn't keep improving. Oxygen flattens coffee out ; slowly at first, then all at once. Keep the bag sealed and rolled down, out of the light, at room temperature. Not the fridge, which is a humid box full of last night's dinner. And grind it when you're about to drink it: whole beans hold for weeks, ground coffee gives up in days.

The honest answer is that the best window is the one you find yourself. Pull the same coffee on day five, day fifteen and day twenty, and you'll taste the difference plainly enough. That's the part worth the patience.

Grab a bag of Sunrise or Outlaw, have a look at what's on the Filter / Espresso list, or head to the Brew Guide once yours has had its rest.