How important is a roast date? We look at when our bread was baked. We look at when our meat was cut. We look at all 360 degrees of every vegetable and fruit then smell it before we put it in our shopping cart. Shouldn't we look at the roast date on our coffee? Somewhere down the road we never picked that up.
You are right in saying your year old coffee won't kill you, but this isn't Egyptian honey we're talking about. It might still taste like coffee, but it isn't something you can rave about. You deserve better. If you're looking for good coffee, you have to look for the roast date, and demand one.
Having a best before date isn't good enough. You want coffee that tastes good, not coffee that just-isn't-bad-yet. If a company doesn't have a roast date, it means they've stopped caring about the freshness of their coffee and started thinking about how full their shelves are.
We apologize if you've come into Eclipse and we've run out of a micro-lot. We really do, because it's an amazing coffee. We've got a great excuse though. We made enough to keep it fresh. Your regular grocery store can't guarantee that, and countless other coffee sources can't either.
Think that's too much to think about? After coffee is roasted it releases gases and over time develops flavour. At Eclipse we don't put any coffee in our espresso hopper until it's at least 8 days old. 10 to 12 days preferably. At espresso level it can be too acidic and bright if brewed too early. Between the one week and five week mark, coffee is at its best. After five weeks it starts to lose flavour and go downhill from there. If you aren't going through your coffee within two months of buying a bag, you should probably think about buying a smaller one.
