What To Do After Roasting Coffee Beans

You shouldn’t use coffee beans as soon as they’re roasted. It’s important to rest your beans first, allowing them to cool before leaving a number of days for the degassing process. This will ensure that your coffee beans are at their best by the time you use them to brew coffee.

The length of time that coffee beans need to rest for after roasting will depend on the bean and the roasting method. While some coffee beans may reach peak freshness just hours after roasting, most beans require at least a few days of rest.

It’s important to cool coffee beans down immediately after roasting. Rapid cooling halts the roasting process, preventing coffee beans from becoming over-roasted. If you don’t cool coffee beans down quickly as soon as roasting is done, you’ll end up with beans roasted darker than you want. This will also affect the flavor of your beans and your coffee.

As soon as the roasting process is over, release the roasted coffee beans into a cooling sieve. The beans should be completely cooled within 4 to 5 minutes, which ensures that the roasting process is done. This helps to retain flavor within the coffee beans and prevent loss of aroma and coffee oils after roasting.

As soon as the roasting process is over, release the roasted coffee beans into a cooling sieve. The beans should be completely cooled within 4 to 5 minutes, which ensures that the roasting process is done. This helps to retain flavor within the coffee beans and prevent loss of aroma and coffee oils after roasting.

Different cooling methods have distinct pros and cons. Air cooling maximizes the shelf life of beans because it keeps them dry during the cooling process. Water quench cooling increases moisture levels and reduces shelf life via oxidation, but it also brings out deeper flavor notes in some coffee beans.

Once the coffee beans are fully cooled, you can store them for the degassing process. Degassing coffee beans is very important because it allows the gasses that build up during roasting to be released from the coffee beans.

When coffee beans are roasted, natural gasses including carbon dioxide build up within the bean. These gasses are formed by the chemical reactions that occur when compounds in the coffee beans come into contact with high levels of heat. All roast levels, including light and dark, will require degassing.

The time it takes to degas coffee beans varies from between a few hours to a few weeks. How long you’ll need to degas coffee beans depends on the type of beans used, the roasting process, and the method you’ll use to brew your coffee.

For example, when you brew a coffee using the espresso method, your coffee beans will only come into contact with hot water for a short period of time. This requires that your beans release a large amount of flavor very quickly, which requires a longer period of degassing.

Degassing coffee beans simply means storing them in an opaque, airtight container for a number of days or weeks before you use them to brew coffee. It’s a simple but necessary step if you want to enjoy great-tasting coffee.

If you don’t degas coffee beans before you use them, the gasses that remain in the coffee beans will impede the movement of water around your coffee. Not only will this slow down the coffee brewing process, but it will hinder extraction and result in weak-tasting coffees that lack flavor and aroma. CO2 can also leave your coffee with a sour, acidic taste.

It’s important to rest coffee after roasting to allow time for the flavors to settle. Resting your coffee beans ensures that carbon dioxide that’s built up during roasting can escape, leaving behind only the flavors and aromas of your coffee beans and the roast profile.

Some studies show that 40% of the gasses that build up in coffee beans are released within the first 24 hours after roasting. While this demonstrates the importance of the first day, that still means that 60% of the gasses within the bean remain after a day of resting.

It’s usually best to rest your coffee beans for between one and two weeks to allow plenty of time for the beans to release CO2. This should prevent carbon dioxide within your coffee beans from impeding extraction during brewing.

However, it’s also important not to leave your beans to rest for too long: this could result in stale coffee beans and flavorless coffee. Gasses in the coffee beans are also responsible for the foamy layer of crema that forms on espresso, so you don’t want every particle of CO2 to escape if you’re resting beans for use in espressos.

Research shows that the flavor of fresh coffee doesn’t peak immediately after roasting. This is due to the resting phase, which should occur first. Instead, coffee flavor is at its peak typically around two weeks after roasting. Flavor drops quickly after this, falling very low by weeks four and five.

Source: Boot Camp Coffee

The best way to keep coffee beans fresh after roasting, even during the resting phase, is storing them well. Optimal coffee bean storage means storing your beans in an opaque, airtight container in a cool and dry environment. If you want to store your beans in a glass jar, make sure you store this in a dark cupboard.

Coffee beans go stale much more quickly when they come into contact with air, light, heat, and moisture. The oxygen in air can hasten oxidation, a chemical reaction that takes place after roasting that results in loss of flavor and aroma within the bean.

Direct sunlight can also cause fast degradation of coffee beans, which is why it’s important to store beans in an opaque container away from light. Exposure to heat can also cause coffee beans to lose flavor, which is why they should always be stored somewhere cool, outside of the fridge.

Storing coffee beans in the fridge may keep them cool, but it can also result in moist coffee beans. Moisture not only impacts the flavor of your beans but speeds up the rate at which your coffee beans will go bad. Coffee beans that become damp will go rancid much more quickly, resulting in bad-tasting coffee that could even make you ill.

Signs that your coffee beans have gone stale include a lack of taste or aroma. Old coffee beans may also go dry, losing their oily coating over time. If your coffee beans smell rancid, this indicates that they are not just stale but bad. Coffee beans with a sour, unpleasant smell should be disposed of immediately.

You can use coffee beans straight after roasting, but it’s likely to result in coffee with a weak or bitter taste. Using coffee beans immediately after roasting means that there will be lots of carbon dioxide remaining inside the beans.

As well as altering the flavor of the beans, this prevents water from penetrating the coffee particles and slows down extraction. If you use coffee beans before the degassing process is finished, slower extraction could result in bland, weak-tasting coffee.

Resting coffee beans for at least a few days before brewing coffee will allow the flavors of the bean - and the roast profile - to come out. Roasting is an intensive process that provokes a chemical reaction within the coffee beans. It’s important to leave time for these new flavors to settle before using coffee beans.

Some experts suggest that allowing coffee beans to rest for at least one to two weeks after roasting is ideal, with the peak time to use coffee beans two to four weeks after roasting. At this time, the beans should still be fresh and flavorful while also thoroughly rested and degassed.

Ensuring that your coffee beans have been properly rested before use will maximize the effectiveness of your brewing methods. Coffee beans with lower CO2 levels are easier to extract flavors from. This results in perfectly extracted coffees with bold, complex flavor profiles.

The peak flavor window for roasted coffee beans is between two and four weeks after the roasting date. This allows plenty of time for the coffee beans to rest and degas before use, without leaving them to go stale.

If you use coffee beans sooner than this, they may still be high in carbon dioxide and other gasses from the roasting process. CO2 remnants in coffee beans can result in bitter, sour coffee, as well as impeding extraction.

However, if you leave your coffee beans in storage for too long, this causes them to go stale or even bad. Stale coffee beans will produce flavorless, weak coffee, and coffee beans that have gone bad may produce rancid coffee that is not safe to drink.

The best way to ensure that your coffee beans are at the right level of freshness is by tracking the roasting date carefully. If you’re buying coffee beans, make sure you buy from a roaster that prints the roast date of the beans on each bag so that you know exactly when to use them.

If you roast your own coffee beans, write the roast date on each container and keep batches of coffee beans roasted on different days separate. You might find that some beans taste better around seven days after roasting, while others take closer to 21 days to reach peak flavor levels.

Remember that coffee starts to degrade as soon as roasting is finished. Choose a suitable storage container to prevent air, moisture, heat, and light from reaching your coffee beans to maximize their shelf life even during this rest period.