Do you have some older beans that you want to use, but have lost some of their freshness? Coffee connoisseurs know that as you get further out from the roast date coffee tends to lose its flavor. While there's no secret that will make older beans as good or better than those that are fresh roasted, there are some tricks you can use to get a decent cup out of beans that might be past their prime. Here's three steps you can take:
#1 - Grind Finer
Firstly, there's using a finer grind setting. A finer grind will produce more restriction on water passing through the grounds, which will increase extraction time. Normally you want to balance your flow rate carefully in order to hit a middle of the road extraction time that produces balance between more bitter and sour flavors. With older coffee you may need a longer extraction time from a slower flow rate to get a slightly stronger cup. This can be a bit challenging to find the sweet spot for as too fine of a grind will result in a bitter brew.
#2 - Use a Lower Brew Temperature
As noted, if you do grind finer you'll often end up with a more bitter flavor. This is compounded by the fact that your coffee likely already tastes more bitter since it's a bit older. This is because those bitter notes are often the last parts of the flavor profile to fade, resulting in their overstated presence as other flavors lose their potency. One way that you can correct for this is by using a lower water temperature. A lower temp will help to balance out the extraction introduced by a finer grind without adversely effecting flow rate. The result is a bit more balance out of that longer extraction, more bitter bean.
#3 - Add More Coffee
Finally, another important step here is to simply add more coffee. As you would naturally expect, the ratio of coffee to water has a big effect on taste. Using less coffee typically results in a weaker brew, and using more will make your cup stronger. It should then be clear as to why upping your coffee volume would help to compensate for older, less potent beans. While something around a 1:16 ratio of coffee to water is generally agreed upon as a gold standard for fresh coffee, using more beans can certainly help if they're older and less flavorful.
Check out our video below for more tips on brewing older coffee beans, and be sure to let us know in the comments if you have any more ideas!