coffee that’s local, fresh, & quality

This is a bit of a stream of consciousness, but hopefully there is a nugget of good info for those that read! Thanks for being here!

In north America, saying “local coffee” is a bit of a farce. All coffee is grown within ~ 20 latitudinal degrees of the equator - so yeah… it had a journey! Coffee has had a dark history ripe with slavery, colonialism, and just plain old exploitation. Unfortunately, a lot of that history still steeps into the present. And of that 7 dollar salted caramel latte you ordered from St*rbucks, less than 70 cents makes it’s way back to the coffee growers. The rest goes to coffee processing, sorting, on-site packaging, freight, import fees, importing companies, roasting, packaging again, brewing, and endless marketing!

Coffee growing regions and tasting notes, courtesy of Torch Coffee Roasters

Green coffee is incredibly shelf-stable and can last up to 3 months without a noticeable decrease in cup quality! But once those hardy little beans are roasted, the clock starts ticking! The beans start to oxidize immediately after roasting and hit their peak flavor around 36-ish hours after roasting. In leu of flash-freezing roasted coffee in airtight deep-freezers (which some shops do, and I reallllly wanna go to one someday), just treat it like any other perishable good and use it quick!

In light of these realities - buying locally roasted coffee and brewing it at home within 2 weeks of roasting is the ideal! It helps keep coffee affordable and a higher percentage of your purchase goes directly to coffee growers (but woof, still not enough. I’ll discuss in a future post…) I’ll happily ship ya coffee and it should arrive within a week of roasting - giving you about another week to enjoy it all! The 5 lb. bags definitely get stale… So if you can’t get through the bag in a week-ish, it’s best to just buy coffee from one of the plethora of local, ethical shops (whatever that means!) roasting in your neck of the woods and save the monetary and environmental cost of shipping!

I know single-origin coffee is more expensive then grocery store blends - but holy cow is it freeking delicious. If you have never had freshly roasted (within two weeks) coffee before, you are in for a treat! Lastly, I have a full-time job - so I do this to help supplement my salary a bit , it’s just a lot of fun, and I enjoy friends and family’s enjoyment!

Even if today isn’t great - hopefully tomorrow can start with a blank page!