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I'll Drink to That! What is your favorite beverage to have with a cigar? Juice? Cola? Beer? Port? Single Malt Scotch? This room is for the discussion of beverages, especially alcoholic beverages that go well with cigars!

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Old 08-17-2012, 08:48 AM   #1
Mad Dawg
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Rest times for fresh roasted coffee

From the Daily Coffee thread:
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Originally Posted by Bobbystbob View Post
La Minita, with 3, excellent. The additional days rest really smoothed it out. Good cup
This gets right to something I've been thinking about rather a lot lately. I typically don't rest my coffee more than 24 hours, and my norm is more like 12 hours - roast in the afternoon for consumption the following morning.

To be sure, I've done the experiments myself. I've roasted a couple of pounds of coffee at a time and brewed it over 7+ successive days so as to track the evolution of the flavors and overall impressions as rest time is increased. A few observations follow.

The amount of foam that the ground coffee generates when the hot water hits it decreases steadily with increasing rest time. This is a no-brainer. Roast coffee throws off gas (mostly CO2) after it's roasted, and eventually, all of the gas is gone. I've heard people assert that coffee that is still offgassing is not yet ready to drink, but that (to my tastes) is bullshit. Once the gas is gone, the coffee is stale. All canned coffee is pre-staled so that it won't generate gas once it's sealed in the can. If it weren't, BOOM!

Flavors change as rest times increase. To my tastes, some rest is required. I've ground and brewed coffee warm from the roast, and I don't find it pleasant at all. But...that's exactly what professional coffee tasters do. Frankly, how they see past that to what a coffee will taste like when it's rested is beyond me.

How much rest a coffee needs is the key, and I believe that's a matter of individual tastes. At the kind of short rest times I typically use, the brewed coffee has a kind of prickly edge to it; I've come to like that. After 2-3 days, most coffees will have lost that prickliness, and smoothed out considerably. That's fine, but I've had coffees where flavor components that I love (e.g., blueberries) disappear with that much rest. Deciding how much rest is needed to smooth out the cup without sacrificing key flavors is a kind of a tricky business.

But it's also part of what makes roasting your own coffee so much fun.

Discuss!
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Old 08-17-2012, 08:55 AM   #2
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I rarely wait less than 2 days or more than 4. I guess that pricklyness you like, is what I don't like. I love the way the La Minita smoothed out, that prick is gone
Certainly some coffees require more rest. SW reminds us that a Yemen I bought recently "NEEDS" 72 hours of rest to be at it's best.
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Old 08-17-2012, 09:08 AM   #3
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Part of the reason I brought this up now is that one of the two Sumatras I just got from SMs says "Ensure proper rest time" on the bag label...without specifying that "proper rest time" IS for this bean. Guess I'll do some experimenting...
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Old 08-17-2012, 09:09 AM   #4
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Occasionally I'll let myself get caught short and will drink coffee that has only rested 12 - 16 hours after roasting. But I prefer something after a 2 - 4 days period. Almost all of the coffee I drink is made in a stainless steel moka pot aka stovetop espresso maker which produces pretty intense coffee so the subtle nuances from additional rest time are noticible to me. The prickliness in young roasted coffee Doug mentions is apparent to me and I prefer to let it mellow for a couple of days. I tend to roast about 10 day to 2 weeks worth at a time and find that after a couple of days of rest it stays pretty consistent for up to 2 weeks. I store the roasted coffee in an airtight container but open the lid a couple of times during the first few days. Lately, I've been going for lighter roasts, stopping after first crack and before second crack and this seems to accentuate the value of letting it rest for a few days.

I'll be interested to see what others do.
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Old 08-17-2012, 09:18 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mad Dawg View Post
Part of the reason I brought this up now is that one of the two Sumatras I just got from SMs says "Ensure proper rest time" on the bag label...without specifying that "proper rest time" IS for this bean. Guess I'll do some experimenting...
"Guess I'll do some experimenting"

Isn't that the joy and excitement of it all?
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Old 08-17-2012, 09:33 AM   #6
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Quote:
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"Guess I'll do some experimenting"

Isn't that the joy and excitement of it all?
Got it in one!
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Old 08-17-2012, 09:35 AM   #7
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Got it in one!
Congrats!
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Old 08-18-2012, 04:29 PM   #8
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I should but I have never really made it a science. It seems
that a lot of times the coffee tastes better the 2nd day. Now
I try to roast enough for 3-4 days at a time.

My problem is, the wife likes a very dark oily roast. Whereas, I prefer
just a little beyond the 1st crack. So I have to do 2 different batches.
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Old 08-18-2012, 05:04 PM   #9
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Oh, the things we do for love.
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Old 08-19-2012, 08:53 AM   #10
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I used to be an ardent supporter of letting beans rest at least 48 hours, but 4 days was even better. It seemed to let all beans smooth out to a very enjoyable cup. There was a time or two though that I had run myself out of roast and it was either find something else to drink or wait 2-4 days for my coffee to get right. I roasted one evening and drank the next morning. I noticed flavor nuances in those coffees that I had not experienced before and they were good nuances.

After that I rarely let anything set longer than overnight before grinding.
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