Besides coffee beans, Front Street stores also sell drip bag coffee. However, drip bag coffee needs to be made on site, so if a customer wants to buy a pack of drip bag coffee at the store without a reservation, they usually have to wait about 10 minutes.So some customers will ask this question while waiting: "Wouldn't it be more efficient to make the drip bag coffee in advance and have it ready?"Indeed, making it in advance would improve efficiency for everyone. Front Street would not need to go to the trouble of making it on site, and customers would not need to wait too long. But Front Street still uses this less efficient method. The reason is that the flavor window of drip bag coffee is relatively short.
Why is the flavor window of drip bag coffee shorter?First, we need to understand that the reason freshly ground coffee is more popular is that we can taste richer coffee flavors from it. The main source of coffee flavor is the aroma produced during the roasting of coffee beans. Aroma leads the way, and when combined with other sensory experiences, it brings to mind specific food tastes. This is how coffee flavor is formed.However, aroma is volatile! After coffee beans are roasted, the aroma, along with carbon dioxide, begins to escape from the inside out continuously. Generally speaking, what we call the flavor window refers to the period after carbon dioxide has dissipated to the point that it no longer affects extraction and before the aroma has completely escaped.Because during this period, we can very easily dissolve the flavor substances in the coffee and brew a delicious cup of coffee with rich taste and full body. Generally speaking, the flavor window of coffee beans lasts about two months. After two months, the aroma inside the coffee beans has almost completely dissipated. If we brew at this point, we can only extract the coffee's own sourness, sweetness, and bitterness.Without the aroma, although the coffee is not necessarily unpleasant to drink, it tastes rather "stiff," "dull," and unremarkable. So in general, everyone tries to finish coffee beans within two months, and then buys freshly roasted coffee beans to replenish their supply.But note that the two-month flavor window mentioned earlier by Front Street applies only to whole coffee beans, not to coffee that has been ground into powder. Because when coffee beans are whole, their surface area exposed to air is relatively small, and there is also a physical barrier formed by the shell and dense structure, so the rate of aroma loss is very slow.These "aroma-retaining" effects are completely lost once the coffee beans are ground into coffee powder! Because when coffee beans are ground into coffee powder, the surface area increases exponentially, and the rate of aroma volatilization is greatly accelerated!Drip bag coffee uses pre-ground coffee powder, so compared with coffee beans, the flavor window of drip bag coffee is very short.How short exactly? Under the same storage conditions, the aroma loss of coffee powder is about twice that of coffee beans. That is to say, if the flavor window of coffee beans is 2 months, then the flavor window of coffee powder/drip bag coffee made with coffee powder is about 1 month. Because of this, many merchants try every possible way to lock in the aroma of drip bag coffee!So this is why Front Street stores insist on making drip bag coffee only after it is ordered. The goal is to reduce the loss of coffee aroma and make the flavor window last a bit longer~To prevent any misunderstanding, Front Street would like to remind everyone here that the flavor window is not the same as the shelf life. The shelf life of coffee is as long as 365 days. After the flavor window has passed, we can still brew it as usual. It is just that the aroma is not as full, and it tastes a bit plainer. That is all~
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
