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A Bean's Journey
The short life of a coffee bean
Time may be on the Rolling Stones' side, but it's no friend of ours. You can start with the finest green coffee, roast it to perfection, and blend it with genius, but if it isn't fresh, you've got yourself a lot of work for a not too great cup of coffee.
Let's follow a batch of beans to see what happens under our watch.
Immediately after the precision roasting and cooling cycle, we seal the beans in 12-ounce, one-pound, or five-pound nitrogen flushed vacuum packages. Then they "de-gas" for about 24 hours - and that's when they develop their full flavor profile.
Some of those flavorful beans end up in our bulk bin fixtures in grocery stores where they run the risk of exposure to heat, moisture, and light. We combat any potentially adverse affects with strict rotation standards. We assume a maximum shelf life of 21 days - 14 in the bin and seven with the consumer - so two weeks after a bean appears at the supermarket, out it goes. Cravens is the only grocery store roaster that goes to such extremes; most bulk coffee just hangs around, bored out of its mind, until someone buys it.
To keep your Cravens fresh, go through your beans in no more than 10 days. Be especially careful if you grind it ahead of time; ground coffee can lose freshness faster if it's not kept cool (no more than 70 degrees), dry, and in the dark. It's not afraid.
