Coffee Freshness at GJ

[thegoodies]

Out of interest I emailed the big chain Glourious Jeannie coffee company and asked them this question.

"I’ve heard that coffee has a life span of about 3-4 weeks after it has been roasted. Does the coffees that are used at Gloria Jeans Outlets fall within this time period?"

They replied with...

"Good morning Steve

Thank you for writing to us.

Our coffee is roasted and packed immediately here on our premises in Sydney.

Because of this, our 1kg bags have a shelf life of 12 months and our 200g have a shelf life of 18 months.

Our coffee is roasted, packed and flushed with nitrogen to eliminate oxygen and packed in air tight bags.

We trust that this assists you and thank you again for your enquiry."

Have they stumbled upon a technique that no other coffee roaster in the world knows about to be able to keep the beans fresh for 12 - 18 months. Maybe its the nitogen.

I think not. :-/

[marcstolk]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

Thats a very ignorant response dont you think. GJ have no idea... but their roasting facilities are unreal!!

[yeeza]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ



"We trust that this assists you and thank you again for your enquiry."


Haha, it sure has - assisted me to never go there and pay for 12 month old roasted beans.

I admit that I went there when i started drinking coffee years ago and didnt know the difference. A friend brought one over to my place the other day, and lets just say it went cold.

[thegoodies]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

but their roasting facilities are unreal!!

Too bad the unreal part of this doesnt carry through to the cup. The beans they are roasting might be really good. Its just a shame that that much coffee is left on the shelves for too long and not getting to the customers fresh.

[Thundergod]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

How come the smaller bags have a longer shelf life?

[Big_Steve]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

our 1kg bags have a shelf life of 12 months and our 200g have a shelf life of 18 months.

Im loving that "logic"! ;D

[Dennis]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

Because of this, our 1kg bags have a shelf life of 12 months and our 200g have a shelf life of 18 months.

Makes perfect sense to me - its the bags that have that shelf life...not the coffee! ;D

[thegoodies]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

I dont understand how companies get away with selling such an out of date product. This doesnt happen with other products on this sort of scale. especially with the Real expiry date of 1 month compared to the selling date of 18 months. Its just wrong.

Im sure butchers or green grocers dont sell products that are 12 months OUT OF DATE. Well most of them anyway

[GrindOnDemand]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

I dont understand how companies get away with selling such an out of date product.  This doesnt happen with other products on this sort of scale.  especially with the Real expiry date of 1 month compared to the selling date of 18 months.  Its just wrong.

Im sure butchers or green grocers dont sell products that are 12 months OUT OF DATE.  Well most of them anyway

...well ... because the product that the consumer buys from a butcher or greengrocer goes rancid a helluva lot quicker than a sealed bag of roasted coffee beans.

Dont get me wrong, I wouldnt subject my beloved Anfim to a brown with a roasted date any more than 3 weeks prior.

My point is, different consumables are subject to differing rotting characteristics. A bag of roasted beans, roasted 2 months ago, may exude a stale aroma & produce a crema-less, flavour-less extraction to us pedantic buggers in the CS world, but to your average punter - nup!

The BIG commercial roasters (like GJs) get away with it, because they have an un-educated audience/consumer base whose palate has been trained over their coffee tasting lives to expect a certain taste. That taste defines what coffee IS to such an audience.

Essentially, they get away with selling a dubious product because they have a strong consumer base that repeatedly buys it ... therefore its legitimised as a marketplace benchmark of coffee.

Like the wine scene, give it a bit of time and I reckon the coffee scene will evolve likewise.

And ... the bubble of big coffee franchises, serving stale extracted muck hidden with caramel infused cheap milk, will burst.

[nunu]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

I reckon its time for the 4th wave of coffee.

[GrindOnDemand]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

... and new avatars nunu - wheres the beloved bunny/pancake?

[Andy]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ


Off topic but...

I bought some coffee from a little known but fairly well respected small roaster and the coffee was pretty good but the useby date was 3 years in the future!

3 years!!!

...back on topic...

At least GJs got back to you, thats pretty good and if you are comparing their coffee to the couple of big names that roast in Italy with months of shipping and distribution then I guess they can be proud of the GJ freshness.

It all depends on what you call fresh!

[Fresh_Coffee]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

Guys please.......

A little bit of understanding and  / or lateral thinking is required from you.

The process mentioned is in a nutshell, entirely correct for modern "supermarket quality" coffee.

I look at it simply as if there are 2 different sides to the retail COFFEE industry. One is the supermarket / prepack / preground / on the shelf type market, and the other is the specialty roaster fresh coffee market.

If your thing is is fresh roast and gourmet quality origins, you support small to medium sized local  specialty roasters, not the other.

The problem lies, where some supermarket prepackaged type roasters / suppliers have an identity crisis and attempt to present themsleves in the other side of the market, such as glorious jeannies and a couple of other well known CAFE (not coffee) chains that try and sell beans on the side.

In addition please note, its not the parent roasters fault if individual franchise stores in their chain dont have enough turnover and may be selling stale beans. Its the individual chain store owners responsibility to know something about their chosen "profession" and know what they should be doing to manage their stock properly to optimise the quality of their product and therefore the good name of their individual store as well as their BRAND.

In essence (and I certainly AM NOT going in to bat for them just simply placing a different perspective for you),  you probably received the only logical answer possible from the franchise office.  Coffeesnobs actually shouldnt be going there.

Hope this helps.

Attilio
aka FC, first / original CS site sponsor.

[coffeebreath]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

Off topic again but related enough I reckon...

Curiously, I picked up an old copy of either Crema or Cafe Culture (cant remember which) in a local cafe a while back. There was an article about coffee freshness, in which they claimed that when packed appropriately there was little or no difference between fresh coffee and coffee that was months old, up to 12 months infact. Im para-phrasing coz I dont have the article now, but they reported to have used scientific methods in arriving at this conclusion and had facts at thier disposal to back it up. I dont know how well these facts and methods would stand up to scrutiny, but it was an interesting read anyway....Perhaps GJs paid for the research!!!

Ofcourse it wasnt interesting enough to make me even consider changing my opinion about the importance of freshness...

[Indraunt]

Re: Coffee Freshness at GJ

There is a difference - you pull a shot of coffee roasted today and then pull a shot roasted 6 month ago (for arguments sake, lets use any of starbucks beans for the 6 month old - drop by to the Balmain store and Ill gladly refuse to sell it to you if you say youre a coffee snob), the crema of the fresh coffee will be richer, softer and far more plentiful than the 6 month old which would likely only have a very thin layer of crema.

Crema is important to espresso - thus we shouldnt really be using beans older than a month at most...