Stale coffee beans
by Elaina
(Overland Park, Kansas, USA)
QUESTION:
How do I make stale roasted coffee beans taste fresh again? I bought columbian supremo whole coffee beans from my local grocer about 6 months ago and they have been in the same bag that they came in.
I know that the whole beans have got to be stale but I don't want to just throw them out if there is a way for me to make them fresh again. How can I make my stale whole coffee beans taste fresh again?
ANSWER:
Elaina, hi
The short answer to your question is that you can’t make stale roasted coffee beans fresh again. No more than you can you can make stale cookies fresh again, or stale bread fresh again.
If they were green coffee beans, unroasted, that would be a whole other story. Green beans are bagged in sacks after processing and then make their way around the globe to wholesalers, and then to individual roasters.
Through this long journey the green beans are stable and don’t become stale.
It’s the roasting process that changes everything. From the moment coffee beans come out of the roaster, they begin to lose flavor. That’s because the volatile oils in coffee begin to evaporate, and it is in those oils that much of the flavor can be found.
This is why small and artisan coffee roasters often make a point of letting their customers know that the coffee beans they sell were roasted on that same day, or the day before. It lets people know that very little of the flavor will have been lost.
As for your stale beans, I am afraid there is nothing you can do to bring them back to their original, fresh state.
Sorry about that!
Further reading:
Finding and making the most of gourmet coffee…
