Why does roast date matter? Coffee is dry, it’s shelf stable. Why does it matter when it was roasted?
The easy answer here is that everything stales over time. Spices, tea, and yes, coffee. All of these slowly become more stale as they sit in contact with oxygen and the volatile compounds degrade. This reduces the amount of available soluables when you go to brew your tea or cook with your spices. Long story short, old coffee loses its vibrancy and starts to taste weak, flat, and just old.
What does this mean for my coffee buying?
Always look for a date on the bag, If it’s a Roasted On date - excellent. This is the specific information you’re looking for, and you’re wanting to drink those beans generally between 3ish days off roast (after the roast date) and 5ish weeks after the roast date. If you've got a "Best Before", it's generally for 1 year after the roast date (but please trust us, you do not want to drink year old coffee). Keep in a sealed container, and if you’re going to be storing them for a longer length of time (say, you’ve been gifted several fresh bags of coffee for your birthday but you can’t drink 5 bags in 5 weeks) pop those suckers in airtight ziplocks or prettier containers like airscapes and into the freezer. Grind just before brewing (no need to defrost!) and you’re looking good.
What happens if I can’t grind fresh??
It's true that coffee staling is exacerbated by having the coffee pre ground, one of the main reasons we always recommend prioritizing having your own grinder to grind fresh when you can. However, there are still ways we can prevent and reduce loss of flavor in our coffee. Not everyone has space in their budget and/or kitchen for a grinder, and that’s totally ok.
If this is you, I would look into buying less coffee more often, and getting it fresh ground each time you purchase. Look for a local roaster or cafe that sells whole beans and get them ground for your brew method (pour over, drip, chemex, french press, etc) by the barista or roaster. Some grocery stores also offer this option. Try to get no more than a weeks' worth or so ground at a time, and even then, I recommend keeping the ground coffee in the freezer, once again in an airtight container (looking at you, ziplock containers!) and only taking out what you need to use at a time.
Once you start being able to taste that a coffee is fresh, it’ll be hard to be ok with a pre ground tin of Maxwell House, so bear in mind that your standards may change and look forward to being known as the friend who makes really good coffee =)
