Specialty Coffee

A simple set of rules that would define Specialty coffee.

1. Freshness. It is generally accepted that roasted coffee stales.  Specialty coffee should therefore have short shelf live. I would suggest 3 month maximum. Beyond that date it is still good coffee, just not special.  Such a rule would immediately exclude most of the big mainstream roasters who work with a 1 or 2 year best before date.
2. Packaging. Shops and Webshops supplying coffee to the public, should always offer coffee in 250g packaging. The logic behind this is simple, 250g equals 30 espressos. 30 coffees per week is 4 per day.  This is a normal healthy consumption. It doesn't exclude selling kilo packs to those who drink more or have larger families. But single people with average consumption should be able to buy a weeks worth of fresh coffee beans without hassle.
   
3. Information. Beyond the freshness factor, specialty coffee should also offer the customer more information about the product that they are drinking.  This requires that importers pass on information to their customers , the roasters, who in turn pass on this information to the shops and cafes, and they in turn pass on the information to the consumer.
   

How many Espressos can you drink in a day?

Well, what a day, busy but not too much and the record number of espressos in one day is 13.

In the course of a 12 hour work day that makes just over one per hour. But although I love espresso, and especially our Coffee etc. espresso, I really don't think that I could have drunk much more.

And the caffeine was finally kicking in too. At the end of the day I was bouncing around.

How much coffee should you buy?

Coffee is a fresh product. A week after roasting, it is loosing its flavours. A month after roasting it has lost all of its best qualities!

For most people 5 cups a day would be enough. That works out to 250g per week. So next time you see that large 1 kilo pack of coffee beans on the supermarket shelf, ask yourself, is it really such a bargain. The use by date is often 2 years from the date of roasting, and even with the best packaging in the world, once opened, you have less than a week.

Pop round to your local small coffee shop/house and ask for 250g of this weeks coffee, you will taste the difference!

Coffee myths # 1

Most fresh coffee beans nowadays are sold in "valved" bags. It is claimed that this provides you with fresher better quality coffee.

This is simply not true.
The valves only help the big coffee roasters who cannot supply really fresh coffee. With a valve the bags will not expand like a balloon, because all the aroma is lost from the bag.

If you want real fresh coffee, buy weekly, only as much as you use in a week. And make sure that the bag is a little "puffed up". That shows that it was fresh packed after roasting.

How many Espressos can you drink in a day?

As the owner of a small coffee shop, in the interests of quality checking, I get to drink a lot of espresso every day. Does anyone else get to drink so many? Here I shall be keeping a regular count, and marking those record days.

Well today was a quiet Monday, so today, only 7!

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