From Kev @ coffeeblog. Do This One Thing: Switch Your Beans!

Hello   Kev here :-), Do This One Thing... Make the Switch to Freshly Roasted Coffee Beans. This is for you if you currently buy your coffee beans from the supermarket, or from other large retailers, in other words: "mainstream" coffee. For some people, coffee is just means to an end, a way to convince themselves to climb out of their pit, and the means to get them awake and on the way to work. OK this is partly the case even with the most seasoned home barista ;-), but for an ever increasing number of people, coffee isn't just a caffeine delivery system, it's so much more than that. The fact that you're receiving this email means that coffee is important enough to you to have signed up to this list, and to have spent the time reading quite a few emails from me, so you clearly see coffee as more that just means to an end.  For people who just want wet black coloured stuff that tastes the same every morning and delivers the much-required caffeine, mainstream coffee is absolutely fine. But if you're someone who is trying to improve your cup quality, and you're still using this kind of coffee, then it may be holding you back, so it's probably time to think about making the switch.    What is "mainstream" coffee? What I'm referring to as "mainstream" coffee, is commodity coffee which is bought, roasted and packaged in massive quantities, and is mainly sold by the mainstream FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) industry. Commodity coffee? This kind of coffee is traded in large volumes, at the commodities price, so this kind of coffee is just coffee, in the same way that salt is salt, rice is rice, boat is boat. Oh no wait, that's Shirley Valentine (if that means nothing to you, you're probably either too young or too sophisticated to have seen this film ;-), but give it a watch anyway, it's funny).  Commodity coffee beans are the most commercially viable coffee beans, it's the cheapest (usually), and the volumes are usually there which the big brands need. So if you're buying big brand coffee beans, this is nearly always commodity beans.  Think of any big, mainstream coffee brand, and you'll be thinking about commodity coffee. Nearly every bag of coffee you'll see on a supermarket shelf is this kind of coffee. I say nearly, as there are exceptions, some supermarkets do sometimes have one or two smaller batch offerings, but that's the exception not the norm.  What's wrong with this kind of coffee? Absolutely nothing, if coffee is purely a means to an end to you, and you're not trying to improve cup quality.  It's usually the cheapest, and the most accessible, so if you're someone who just wants coffee as means of caffeination, this kind of coffee is perfect, and that's why it still sells so well.  But if you're someone who is on a mission to improve the quality of the coffee you can make at home, then what's wrong with this kind of coffee is that it's not capable of improving (much). The reason for this: 1: It's usually fairly old by the time the customer opens the bag.  Freshness is key with coffee, especially for espresso. This is why brands including Sage ship their machines with a note that if they're not using freshly roasted (2-4 weeks) beans, the pressurized baskets should be used.  2: The beans aren't high quality Coffee beans sold on this market are always sold at the commodities price, which has absolutely no reflection on the farmers production costs. So the cheapest, highest yield methods have to be used by producers who're selling their beans to this market.  This is why this kind of coffee is usually roasted dark, because roasting darker hides taste defects and enables batch consistency using completely a different mix of beans from one batch to the next. So What's the Answer? Buy freshly roasted coffee beans! If you buy your beans from a small batch roaster, or a specialist supplier of high quality freshly roasted coffee, you're buying coffee which has the potential to be improved.  In other words, your efforts won't be in vain if you're trying to improve your cup quality by upgrading your gear and/or upgrading your home barista skills, if you're using freshly roasted coffee beans.  Even if you struggle with one particular bean, and you will do at some point - you can just switch to another bean, whereas commodity coffee is all so similar and suffers from the same inherent issues as mentioned above, that switching beans if you're using mainstream coffee, is unlikely to make a great deal of difference.  Is Freshly Roasted Coffee Expensive? It can be, but it doesn't necessarily have to be all that more expensive than supermarket coffee, in fact in some cases it can be cheaper.  Using my own coffee as an example, as an excuse for a completely shameless plug, Chocolate Brownie blend is our cheapest coffee, it's just under £20 per kilo if you buy it by the kilo (even cheaper if you use a discount code..., more on that shortly).   Use Discount Code CWNC25 for 25% Off Your First Order As you'll see above, there's a discount available for new customers at cworks.co.uk, applicable for your first order. After that, use the code "coffeebotherers" for 10% off.  But if you find a bean you really love, and you order it on a subscription instead, you automatically get 15% off every order in your subscription, and you can pause it or change it, or cancel, at any time.  But my coffee at cworks is just one of a huge number of sources of freshly roasted beans, we're very lucky in the UK now to have literally several hundred small batch roasters, you probably have one within walking distance! ;-) To find out: UK Coffee Roasters Directory So there you go, if you're not already using freshly roasted coffee beans, make the switch, and just see what a huge difference this makes to your cup quality! Thanks again, Kev coffeeblog.co.uk cworks.co.uk Follow me on Twitter Follow me on Instagram Follow me on Facebook Subscribe to my YouTube Channel Become an Accredited Coffee Botherer

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