You all know the experience of sniffing into a barrel of freshly roasted coffee and coughing from the gas escaping.
But there is a more serious problem when it comes to tasting this coffee. Because, this coffee very often tastes some kind of sharp and spicy in a way that can easily ruin your coffee experience. Also, I feel this coffee has way too much crema, if pulled as an espresso.
My question: How long do you rest your coffees, especially in a small to medium sized roastery with wholesale clients, customers and a cafe. And, did you notice a difference between light and medium to dark roasted coffees. Did you adjust your roasting profiles?
Please give me your thoughts and input on this as well.
I helped with roasting at a small local shop, and we always let freshly roasted coffee rest for a minimum of 24 hours. However, I have since switched jobs and have had problems with coffees rested for as long as 3-5 days. For smaller lighter roasted coffees, I’d say 24-48 hours should suffice, but I prefer to let larger batches (especially of medium roast coffees) set for up to a week. Not sure how stable the science is behind this, but I’ve found it to be a good time frame to follow.
Try bagging 28 samples of a batch then cup on a daily basis for 4 weeks and you’ll know when it is at it’s optimum flavour based on your work practices, coffee, packaging and roast degree. This will be at a point where it has had the opportunity to degas but where oxygen has not caused excessive staling.
Dark roasts degas quicker than light roasts.
Aside from that I would not want to use coffee for espresso until it has rested at least 7 days, ideally longer. Being put in a position where I have to dial in espresso that is fresher than this is an awful experience.
Filter is a different matter, but I still like to rest that too.
In my experience and opinion the importance people attach to super fresh roasted coffee is naive.
I’ve tested this several ways. My experience is medium and light roasts are highly responsive in 14-24 hours. After 24 it is very hard to pick up new flavors unless you cup side by side by side by side. Scientifically, it would have to be batch by batch for this cupping comparison. But if you begin searching you’ll learn that there is already consensus for medium to lighter roasts — of any size batch. 24 hours is optimum and development tapers off as the CO2 dies off.
Darker roasts have more CO2 and tend to develop longer over a few days to as much as a week. I have seen only ONE medium roast taste better in 3 days vs 1 day. Only one.
