On Jan 11, 1:04 am, rw wrote:
jeff miller wrote:
rw wrote:

Wolfgang wrote:

One day last week, Becky stopped by with some freshly roasted and
ground Colombian caranavi.

You should get whole beans and grind your own as needed. Ground coffee
loses its freshness quickly. Keep it in the freezer in a sealed
container.

the freezer thing isn't a good idea in my opinion.

That's what the sea;ed container is for.

I have no interest in roasting my own beans, or growing them for that
matter.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

Actually, it does not seem to make a difference. After a couple of
days, the roasted beans also start losing aroma. The ground beans lose
it even more quickly. After a week at most, even in the freezer, it
just tastes like "ordinary" ground coffee from the packet. Vacuum
sealing also makes little difference. We tried that a few times, ( not
easy to do either! You need a special filter to avoid sucking up the
coffee, but still evacuate and seal the bag! ) but there is a major
difference in taste once the roasted beans or the ground coffee simply
ages. Most of the ground coffee and beans sold in supermarkets etc,
even the very expensive stuff, is sold in vacuum sealed bags, but it
still does not taste like freshly roasted and ground coffee.

Finally, we used a dark glass laboratory storage jar with a glass
stopper seal which somebody gave us, and recommended. ( Can´t say I
noticed much difference with that either!). The only thing that made a
really noticeable difference was to use freshly roasted, ( and of
course after the "resting" time) and ground beans. I usually set the
roaster going about twice a week to keep my wife supplied, and I only
roasted a relatively small amount each time. A maximum of half a
pound, and often only 2...300 grams.

As I said, I really only did it for my wife, and some of her friends
who just loved the taste of fresh coffee, and some were real coffee
freaks, I was initially largely indifferent to the whole thing, but
even I could taste the difference easily, and I enjoyed quite a few of
the results, whereas I would not even have drunk most coffee normally.

It is something you just don´t know until you actually taste the
difference. It is also not that subtle a difference. It is the
difference between something that tastes pleasant, and something that
really doesn´t. It also has the side effect of putting people off the
"normal" stuff, ( whatever that is, I mean the ground coffee sold in
supermarkets etc, which many people here drink). Once they have tasted
a good freshly roasted freshly ground coffee, all they do is moan
about the other stuff!

One or two people also insisted there must be some tricks involved to
get coffee to taste like that, but I don´t known any such tricks. I
simply roasted it and ground it. Even the cheapest tastes better than
the most expensive ready ground coffee. One has to watch a few things,
which have already been mentioned here, like grounds size, and
whatever method or preparation is used must be right, but otherwise it
is not that difficult.

I imagine to get into all the subtleties of blending and all the other
involved things would take a very long time indeed, but I only did it
so my wife could have a nice cup of coffee. It was also actually
considerably cheaper than buying various coffees in the supermarket
etc, but I don´t know if that still holds true. Some stuff has become
very very expensive now. Probably as Steve pointed out, a result of
demand outstripping supply.

When we started doing it, there were not many people doing it, now
there are a large number of people who do it, and the machines are
pretty cheap and easily available.

MC