Whenever you hear me saying ‘freshly roasted coffee’, isn’t the right-off-the-roaster kind of thing. After roasting your coffee, you need to give it time to breathe and de-gas. Degassing is a process where you leave the beans to degas.
What Is Degassing Your Coffee Beans Mean?
After being roasted, your beans need to de-gas. After roasting, your coffee beans are continuously releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) gases. These gases escape your beans in bulk after the first 24 hours.
Brewing your coffee before then will make your coffee taste bitter with a sour aftertaste. Your beans need to undergo an aging and oxidation process for it to fully bring out the true and loving flavors of coffee.
Why Is It Important?
Let’s get straight to the point and talk about why degassing is so important.
Stale Coffee
You’ve probably heard of oxidation making your coffee stale. Well, when you don’t allow your beans to breath then the carbon dioxide will also make your coffee stale. You have to remember that carbon dioxide, or CO2, has oxygen, or O2. Sealing the container too soon will also cause a breakdown of the carbon dioxide producing oxygen inside the container. This will eventually make your coffee stale.
CO2 Pressurization
Capping or sealing your container too soon will result in carbon dioxide pressurization. This pressure will make your container swell and the lid to violently pop open. Pressurization will negatively affect the taste of your coffee giving it a touch of sourness.
How Long Should I Wait to Brew My Coffee?
Most would often suggest that you let your coffee beans degas for at least 12 hours. This is where huge amounts of CO2 is released. In reality, it takes a full 24 hours for most of the unwanted gas to be released.
There are many contentions and opinions about how long it should take for you to degas your beans to maximize its full flavors. Know this though that the best period where your coffee tastes its best is not longer than 14 days. I’ll give my beans a leeway of 15 days but beyond that, I consider my beans stale and old.
Day 1-2 No seal zone
This is the time where the beans need to be exposed to the air
Day 3-4 Resting days
Seal your container and give your beans time to rest for it to reach its full flavor. You can probably call this the aging period.
Day 5-7 Home Brew
This is the perfect time to make drip coffee, pour overs or any homebrew method. The vibrance of the coffee is at its peak. This is the time when you can appreciate the quality of some great coffee beans for espresso.
Day 7-11 Espresso Time
7Learn to make espresso and extract the deepest and most aromatic flavors in this time frame.
Day 10-14 Cold Brew
I love making my 2-week old roasted coffee for a cold brew.
Day 15 Use or Throw
It is a battle whether I should throw it out or use all of the remaining beans for a final brew.
Day 16 Unusable Coffee Stage
Perfect as a soil fertilizer, for skin exfoliation, or for a room fragrance if you love the smell of coffee.
