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Why does Terroir™ make such a big fuss about storing green (raw) coffee? |
Raw coffee has a shelf life. Raw coffee gets old over months; some coffees age far more rapidly than others. The effects of aging are very discernible in the coffee you drink. When freshly harvested, a coffee’s liveliness and floral aromas (if it has any) will be emphasized. As it begins to age the coffee deepens at first, developing body, without harming other positive attributes. Then the coffee goes into decline. Certain floral aromatics disappear first, and then sweetness diminishes progressively as an unpleasantly sour woodiness takes over. Excess humidity or dryness, heat and light all accelerate green (raw) coffees’ loss of quality.
Softer, lower-grown coffees lose their quality faster than higher grown, harder coffees. By December all coffees grown north of the equator, no matter how high-grown, start losing their aesthetic individuality and their sweetness, becoming more and more unpleasantly woody. These include Ethiopian, the best Kenyan (two harvests - right at the equator), all Central American coffees, most Colombian coffees (some areas are south of the equator), and Caribbean coffees. Yet new crop coffees are months away. Hawaiian Kona is harvested earlier and is already appreciably losing sweetness by early summer.
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