Ground Coffee
Once coffee has been roasted, it continues to improve for around three days as the amazing oils & essences gently mature & release.
At Captain Coffee we use that time to send your coffee to you so it arrives in perfect condition for your enjoyment.
After those three days coffee slowly begins to deteriorate as those wonderful oils & essences continue to reach the surface of the bean & evaporate into the surrounding air. This is why coffee has such a wonderful aroma – it’s those escaping oils & essences & this is especially so if it has been ground.
Coffee contains other far less volatile compounds too, many quite bitter. These remain in the coffee with the result that as the “good guys” leave coffee becomes far less palatable.
Grinding coffee opens the beans right up. The surface area of the minute particles is FAR greater than that of the beans they came from & so the wonderful essences & oils evaporate far more quickly.
Genuine “coffee snobs” say that coffee should be prepared within two minutes of being ground. Really! That is the way to get REALLY lovely coffee that would inspire YOU to write like this too!
If you can POSSIBLY buy roasted beans & grind them yourself, do it! You will be astounded at your new-found delight! If you MUST buy ground coffee NEVER buy it in “blocks”! Here’s why. (And I warn you, this is horrible).
Along with those wonderful volatile oils & essences, ground coffee releases carbon dioxide gas. This is natural & is what you breathe out all the time. It does this for about two weeks. To make the blocks, coffee manufacturers must leave the ground coffee open to the air until the process stops! And with the carbon dioxide goes those wonderful compounds. In fact they leave first. The result? Old, stale, bitter coffee.
TOLD you it was horrible!
