How Often Should You Buy Your Coffee?

There’s a common misconception out there, where a lot of consumers seem to think that buying coffee is similar to buying sugar or flour, with coffee being viewed as simply a commodity, a good to be purchased in bulk when prices are low or their favorite grocery stores or coffee houses are offering a promotion or sale. When they find a good coffee they like, or maybe run across a sale, they stock up for a few weeks (or months!) to take advantage.

The fact is, coffee is a highly perishable product and cannot be treated the same as sugar, flour, or any other item you may regularly buy and stock up on. As an analogy, purchasing coffee in bulk would be like stocking up on bread. Unless you’re able to get through all of the bread within a week or two, you’re just going to end up with something old and stale tasting.

Coffee has a very short shelf life and goes stale about 10-14 days after it has been roasted. Here’s a general timeline:

• Day 0 – Coffee is roasted.
• Days 1-3 – Coffee beans are degassing (emitting carbon dioxide as a result of being roasted); using them during the first 3 days will result in a flat, bland tasting brew.
• Days 4-10 – Coffee beans have finished degassing and are at their peak flavor beginning around day 4, becoming increasingly more stale tasting again after around day 10 (or earlier, depending on if you store the coffee properly).
• Days 10-? – Coffee begins degrading rapidly, even if it is vacuum packed or stored properly in your home, due to the bean’s contact with oxygen (there’s oxygen in the container you’re storing the beans in, even if you don’t open it regularly).

To enjoy truly fresh coffee, it should be consumed within 10 days after roasting (14 days is pushing it). Since degassing is occurring for the first 3 days after roasting, when using the beans results in flat tasting brew, and anything outside of about 10 days also results in stale tasting coffee, the window to enjoy fresh roasted coffee is really between days 4 through 10, a total of 7 days.

This is why I recommend that you buy coffee weekly.

This advice only applies if you’re buying truly fresh roasted coffee, though. The coffee in grocery stores is typically 4-8 weeks old (since roasting), with some coffee on the shelves up to 12 months old. Buying coffee weekly from the grocery store won’t help much since they’re already carrying stale coffee (their distribution chains make it very difficult for them to carry fresh roasted coffee). Buy from a local roaster or an online roaster like us.

At Weekly Roast Coffee, we receive and store green coffee beans (which can stay fresh for a very long time) from various countries and, only after receiving online orders do we batch up all like coffee orders together and roast and ship within 24 hours. Since customers receive their orders around day 3 or 4, the beans have completed their degassing during the shipping period and the coffee is at its peak flavor the moment it arrives.

How can you tell that the coffee you’re buying weekly is fresh roasted?

• Only buy coffee that has a ‘roasted on’ date. If the roasted on date isn’t within a few days of roasting, it’s not really considered fresh. As an example, you may be able to find coffee in grocery stores that promise on their bags that their coffee has been roasted within the past 90 days. To me, that’s not good enough. Look for a specific roasted on date and make sure it’s within a few days of roasting.
• You’ll see a head of C02 form when making coffee via most methods other than drip-brew (ex. French press, AeroPress, etc.). This is a visible layer on the top of the steeping coffee and water mix that grows upon the mixture of hot water and fresh coffee with a bit of stirring. This doesn’t happen with coffee older than about 10 days.
• You’ll taste it. If your coffee is bitter and flat tasting, it’s likely not fresh (provided you ground the coffee correctly and used the right proportion of coffee and water!).

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