Looking for the best cup of coffee? Do your homework first! Coffee is coffee, right? Wrong! Quality coffee is the RIGHT coffee. Ignorance is bliss, yes? Wrong again! An informed consumer is always ahead of the game. Choosing your coffee is not any different from picking out a holiday ham. You are fussy about the bread you buy or how much sugar is hiding in your kids cereal. Be discriminating about your coffee. Be informed. The informed coffee consumer is always ahead of the game. From the freshly roasted coffee beans, all the way to the cup you use, choose your coffee wisely. Don’t stick your head in the consumer sand bucket and settle for less than the best. Being willing to accept the coffee commercials and hype they feed us as gospel can cause you to settle for second-rate, low quality coffee beans from a year ago. Vacuum sealed cans were designed to make you think your coffee is fresh and bursting with flavor, when you hear the seal pop. Don’t buy it!
If you start with fresh you get fresh. Quality gourmet coffee is roasted hours prior to shipping and is at your door step within…at the most a week of roasting. It should arrive in a vacuum sealed bag with a breathing seal. Starting with fresh high quality beans means being willing to settle for nothing less than the best high quality coffee beans you can find. Most sites that sell coffee offer fresh ground coffee beans as an option. If you don’t own a coffee grinder, this may work for you until you can purchase one. Purchasing coffee from one of the coffee sites offering this option will at least ensure that your coffee is reasonably fresh, however, it needs to be used up right away, or stored properly. If you buy coffee already ground, you as the consumer want to bear in mind that already ground coffee loses the original quality quickly. Storing coffee in a mason jar with a tight lid on a cool shelf in the pantry is a wonderful way to keep it palatable for up to a month.
Ever purchase ground coffee in the store, open the can, take a whiff, and it smells wonderful? Inside of 24 hours that same can of coffee will not only lose potency, but will smell like it’s been sitting there on the counter for months (a trained nose detects this after a little bit of practice). There are two basic reasons for this phenomenon:
1. The coffee in the can is gleaned from poor quality beans to maximize the profit margins of the mass producing retail market industry. These coffee beans are either low quality arabica beans or they are robusta beans, which are like a weed in the coffee world.
2. The coffee was roasted months ago, vacuum sealed and the quality in the fresh roasted coffee beans is broken down significantly. This is done to meet mass demand in a hurry.
3. (I know I said there were only two, but this one is nagging at me) When you lose flavor you destroy the antioxidants! Antioxidants are our justification for drinking coffee in the first place! Justify your case!
Are you convinced by now that there is no substitute for good quality coffee? Buying quality freshly roasted beans is the best option. Although it does require an initial investment of a good quality grinder, it is well worth the investment. A decent quality grinder can be purchased at your favorite online coffee retailer for between thirty to fifty dollars. Put it on your Christmas wish list to Santa! Hang on, I need a second cup of coffee. There, that’s much better. By the way, I had to make a second pot. Fresh ground and freshly brewed coffee doesn’t last at our house more than 5 minutes, and our pot holds 10 cups. We like it fresh to the last drop! A dyed-in-the-wool coffee lover craves the freshly ground bean.
To complete your investigation and make an informed decision regarding the purchase of freshly roasted coffee beans, you will discover an interesting difference in the spent coffee grounds when comparing store run-of-the-mill name brand coffee to freshly ground. After brewing, grocery store coffee grounds are dead and fall in a heap when they are discarded. They stick together, plop out of the basket, and are not fluffy as they should be. Freshly ground, high quality spent coffee beans are fluffy and moist. You can run your fingers through the fluffy spent grounds and they almost float and feel alive. Once you’ve handled fresh ground gourmet coffee beans in your hand, after brewing, you will agree there is no contest. Freshly ground coffee beans are superior to any other. It is no small wonder that your plants love the spent grounds from fresh ground coffee. They thrive on it as much as we do our first delectable cup…second…and third. Even plants prefer the freshly ground coffee beans and seem to thrive on the hidden nutrients still looming in the recyclable beans. Another justification for our love of good coffee. Not that we need any.
Still not convinced? Does your coffee taste old or burnt an hour after brewing? Coffee made from freshly ground beans stays fresh in the carafe as much as 4 times longer, if it lasts that long at your house. The acid build up is at a minimum and the quality is mouth-watering. There is nothing like it on the planet known to man, beast, and plant life. Once you switch to freshly ground coffee beans, you will never want another cup of stored grocery store coffee again! You think you are addicted to coffee now? Just try freshly ground quality coffee beans. You will be hooked for life! Choose freshly ground coffee, grind it fresh, brew it fresh, drink it fresh. Find a quiet spot, sit back, savor the taste, and simply enjoy the drink of a lifetime. The best cup of Joe begins with freshly roasted high quality coffee beans.
Enjoy the pure pleasure of fresh ground coffee every day! Each day is a gift. Make it wonderful!
