The Best Place to Order Coffee Online?

Great beans, freshly roasted is the only way to get good coffee. It just amazes me that people will use stale ground coffee that isn't even made from arabica beans. Pete's understands freshness and sends out a great product. Their website also has some good coffee lore.

So buy freshly roasted beans in modest quantities. Keep them whole and frozen until use. Make sure that your coffeemaker works correctly. Enjoy.

PS. Swiss process, whole bean decaf is really pretty good. Since my heart attack I had to switch. I usually don't notice the difference except for the lack of kick.
 
Danbo said:
Kimber, you DO know we're just hackin on ya, don't ya? :D Because, as you know, real friends don't let their friends drink Decaf! :)
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"Hey Billy why'd you kill them men?"
"Because they were hacking on me"

One of my favorite movies, Young Guns.
No worries guys. I know you are all jacked up on caffene and that makes you just a little jittery.
 
You shouldn't freeze coffee beans. It's unnecessary. Keeping them away from light, heat and air is what you need to do, but freezing may be overdoing it. It will dry them out. Yuck!

I agree that grinding yourself is the way to go, in every case except for espresso. I'm a sucker for the pre-ground tins of Italian espresso. Pefect grind and when kept in the fridge they have a decent life expectancy.
 
Freezing beans has very little effect on them, except to preserve their freshness. People worry about their absorbing or losing moisture or somehow upsetting their balance, but I just don't taste a difference from anything like that. The main ways that coffee goes bad is through chemical breakdown. Just like any food item coffee will go stale, rancid, or just lose its flavor if you leave it at room temperature. If you freeze it you can save it for months. Since I only drink decaf my regular coffee supply is stored for long periods of time. Whole bean coffee frozen for a year is tremendously better than any fresh canned coffee. If it is frozen for under a couple months it is still excellent. Even with air tight containers I wouldn't want to leave coffee at room temperature for more than a few days.
 
Jeff Clark said:
Freezing beans has very little effect on them, except to preserve their freshness. People worry about their absorbing or losing moisture or somehow upsetting their balance, but I just don't taste a difference from anything like that. The main ways that coffee goes bad is through chemical breakdown. Just like any food item coffee will go stale, rancid, or just lose its flavor if you leave it at room temperature. If you freeze it you can save it for months. Since I only drink decaf my regular coffee supply is stored for long periods of time. Whole bean coffee frozen for a year is tremendously better than any fresh canned coffee. If it is frozen for under a couple months it is still excellent. Even with air tight containers I wouldn't want to leave coffee at room temperature for more than a few days.
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Jeff,

Most experts will tell you that after 10 - 14 days roasted coffee (even frozen) begins to loose its flavor. Some estimate a deterioration rate of up to 10% flavor loss (however that's measured) per day after 2 weeks. Fresh roasted coffee "ages" and continues to develop flavor after roasting stops. The period it is also to sit at room temp and outgass (roasted coffee gives off N2 in the process) is called its rest period and it varies according to varietal, roast, and personal preference. It should be ground and used as soon as possible at this point. You may decrease the time it takes to change its complexity by freezing but you reach a point of where outgassing and sublimation eventually begin to take their toll. Not everyone has the same sensitivity and tastes so not everyone can detect the differences. It also helps to evacuate as much air as possible before tendering your beans to the frozen wastelands of Fridgidaire.

By far the best way to enjoy is home roasting in small batches that can be used within a day or so of roasting. There are a great many sites on the web for home roasting and DIY raosters. Some take on Rube Goldberg dimensions. I've seen heat guns with glass tubes, air poppers for popcorn, oven pan roasting, and everything in between. There are folks out there trying to modify clothes dryers for bulk roasting. Prior to WWII home roasting was the only way most folks knew coffee and it was done over gas or wood stoves madly stirring the beans and filling the neiborhoods with the pungent aroma of burnt coffee oils. I may be rambling a bit but my point is that fresh roast is the way to go and you can make it as cheap or as expensive and intricate as you desire. For a good place to go for additional tips and questions about roasting or coffee in general check out Coffee Geek Enjoy! :)

Now back to the second cup of freshly roasted to a City+ Wallenford Estate Blue Mountain coffee. Life's too short for decaf!!

j
 
I like Ruta Maya Organic from Chiapas, Certified Jamaican Blue Mountain, and Pure Kona Peaberry.

I wonder if the tsunami will affect the Sumatran coffee industry. That is a fine bean in its own right.
 
Mellow Chaos said:
I like Ruta Maya Organic from Chiapas, Certified Jamaican Blue Mountain, and Pure Kona Peaberry.

I wonder if the tsunami will affect the Sumatran coffee industry. That is a fine bean in its own right.
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Sumatran Madaheling, Gayoland, (yeah that's right...Gayoland) Gayoland Mountain, Iskandar, Limtong, etc are grown at higher altitudes on mountainsides and on the Aceh plateau. As long as the varietals that are aged are stored at the estates they were grown on then unless there's a logistics problem the tsunami should have little impact.

j
 
I vote for fresh roasted too. I roast 2 to 3 times a week in a cake pan in the oven on broil. If you keep the oven down to 300° you don't have to stir too often.

I really like Indonesian and African coffees. Personally I like Sulawesi Torawa better than the Sumatran. My current favorite is Ethiopian Harrar horse coffee which they claim is the original wild breed that was taken to Yemen and first cultivated.

I you ever start roasting your own, you will soon see that pre-roasted coffee is always starting to go stale by the time you get it shipped to you. If you happen to have a local store that custom roasts and you can go get a half pound every few days you may be OK, but I'll bet I pay a lot less.
 
I roast mine in a popcorn popper, but there's an art to it unless you like everything dark roasted. The heat from those things is too high so I roast them for 3 minutes, let it cool for 2 minutes, then roast them for 2-3 more minutes and cool them off in a collander under cool water.

I don't understand why people worry about coffee losing moisture in the freezer: they were dried in the sun right after they were picked and dried again in a hot roaster. Moisture is not coffee's friend.
 
People usually don't worry about coffee losing moisture in a freezer, they usually worry about collecting condensed moisture when the coffee is cycled in and out of the freezer as it is used. They also talk about picking up flavors inside the freezer. People also worry about oils migrating to the surface of the beans and some of the other things that Java mentioned in his post. My experience is that all of these are small effects. The big effects are chemical breakdown processes that make stale coffee taste like cardboard (generically refered to as oxidation processes) which are exponential functions of absolute temperature. If you reduce the temperature these processes get very slow. That is why we all own freezers. Roasted coffee isn't all that different from any other cooked leftover. It is certainly best if you consume it fresh, but if you can't you are an awful lot better off putting your leftover in the freezer.
 
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