Picked up a bag roasted two days earlier, which I thought was a win, and every shot has gushed and tasted thin and sharp. The bloom on filter is enormous, foaming right over the top of the cone. Same grinder and same recipe that worked fine with my last bag. Am I supposed to wait, and if so how long?
If you regularly end up with more coffee than you can drink in a month, freezing in single dose portions works well. Small airtight containers, straight from the freezer into the grinder without thawing, and it holds for months. Do not refreeze what you have opened.
Grinding from frozen sounds wrong but I have read that a few times now. Might try with the second half of this bag.
Leave the one way valve alone and keep the bag sealed rather than trying to speed degassing by opening it. Oxygen staling is a much worse and faster problem than CO2 is, and it is not reversible.
Buying two bags on a rotation solves this permanently. Open bag A, buy bag B when A is half gone, so by the time you reach B it has rested a fortnight and you are never brewing anything under a week old.
This is the actual answer for anyone buying from a roaster on a subscription. Costs nothing and removes the problem entirely.
Once you get to the other end of the curve, the tell is different. Stale coffee does not gush, it goes flat and papery, and the bloom barely rises at all. Around week five in a sealed bag for me, faster once opened.
@soy_pour_sasha · 6mo ago · 3 replies
Wait. Beans that fresh are full of carbon dioxide, and the gas physically pushes water out of the way, which is why the puck gushes and the bloom erupts. Nothing is wrong with the coffee or your technique.
Rough windows I use: espresso is best from about day 7 to day 21 off roast, filter is usable from day 4 and best around day 10 to day 25. Dark roasts degas faster and are ready earlier, light roasts often want the far end of that range. Write the roast date on the bag with a marker and just leave it alone.
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@torque_spec · 6mo ago
Day two explains everything then. I will stop touching it until the weekend.
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@krausen_line · 6mo ago
If you cannot wait, grind noticeably finer for those first few days and accept it will not be great. Better to just brew the tail end of the previous bag.
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