When is the Best Time to Drink Coffee past the roast date?

If you’ve ever wondered what that roast date on your coffee means or if it even affects the taste of the coffee, you’re not alone! We get questions about roast dates and coffee freshness a lot in our cafe, so we thought we’d break it down in a blog post.

Picture this: you’ve wandered into a specialty coffee shop somewhere new. Perhaps you’re traveling in a new city. It’s a very busy cafe. There is a whole shelf of amazing looking beans from different origins. You start to browse. The beans all have different roast dates. The staff is friendly, but they’re so busy helping customers. You don’t want to interrupt them. But you don’t know which beans to choose because of the roast dates. What do you do?!

We’ll tell you what to do! This post will give you the tools to choose whether or not a coffee is at the right date for your needs. You’ll march right into that cafe and confidently choose next time!

There’s a lot that goes into the coffee roasting process… we’ll cover that in a later blog post. But what’s important for us to note today is that the roasting process isn’t done right after those beans leave the roaster. There’s another step called degassing.

Degassing starts right after the beans are roasted and can last for about two weeks! During the roasting process, the coffee undergoes chemical reactions, and this causes gas, like carbon dioxide to build up inside the beans. All of the gas doesn’t escape the beans during the roasting process; it continues to escape in those days following the roast.

Why is this relevant to us drinking the coffee? Because during the off-gas process, the beans don’t show their full range of flavor. The still-trapped gasses mute the flavors of the coffee because they actually block the hot water from fully extracting flavor from the grounds. Too-fresh coffee can taste flat or even vegetal. Once the gasses are gone, you’ll get an even extraction and the full range of flavor in your coffee!

This is why super-fresh coffee is not always best! If those beans were roasted yesterday, put them down! Give them time to finish their roasting process by degassing. You’ll get so much more flavor from them in a week or two.

The best estimate for when beans will taste great is two weeks past the roast date. But there is a range, and each coffee has its own sweet spot. So, about 10-21 days past the roast date is when that coffee will give you the most flavorful cup! We know this may seem like a broad range of days, but you really will get a lot of flavor out of your coffee during that range. Yes, coffee does lose flavor as it continues to age, but it takes longer than a lot of people assume.

You can also plan ahead if you’re buying coffee in advance. If it was roasted yesterday, but you still have beans at home, go ahead and buy the fresh beans! They’ll have time to off-gas and be at the perfect date once you’re ready to drink them. If you’re headed home to brew the coffee right away, look for something that is about two weeks past the roast date. It’s going to be so flavorful that day!

Now that we busted the myth of super-fresh coffee, you’ll have the power to march into a coffee shop and select the beans that are perfect for your needs!