Roasted On vs Best Before
While the Best Before date is helpful for assessing an archived yoghurt in the back of the fridge, it’s pretty useless when it comes to coffee.
Controversial opinion? Keep reading for the logic.
Amongst many other things, we likely agree roasting is an important milestone in coffee’s life. We like to think of it as activating a timer on each bean.
Also agreed by most baristas, coffee is ideally consumed within 5-25 days after it’s roasted. That’s it’s premium perfect window. Since the flavour created by roasting will diminish over time, anything consumed after 3 weeks is likely to have lost most of its charm.
This is where we believe the Roasted On date, trumps the Best Before. Expiry can only tell you when the beans will taste like dust, at some far-off point in the future.
Not when the beans were roasted, then how long they’ve sat in a warehouse. Or a shelf. And not when the beans are really at their drinking best.
So unlike tangy milk, old coffee won’t make you sick, it’ll just continue to degrade in taste and quality over time.
And the exact reason why Acme Coffee states the Roasted On date, rather than the Best Before — which can be labelled up to a calendar year past the roast date.
To help achieve our commitment to the best coffee experience, Acme is working on delivering orders by Green Delivery (anticipated early 2024), a push-bike in the Wellington CBD, and throughout NZ on the quickest courier we can find.
Like the hustle made at Prefab Cafe with a coffee in hand, from barista to table, the window for delivering perfectly timed beans isn’t huge, but we think it’s worth making the effort for.
Using a state-of-the-art, Loring - Zero Emission roasting machine, and top quality green beans, Lucas (BioHons) applies a scientific method to the roasting process.
The one-of-a-kind thermodynamic properties of the Loring burner system and fast-reacting thermocouples stay true to the roast profile, every time. Delivering roasted coffee beans with flavour like no other.
The Acme team concentrates their efforts on making the four Acme coffee blends the best they can possibly be. Stripping away the unnecessary and improving what remains.