What is a good recipe for high quality coffee beans that are no longer fresh?

Question

I have a subscription to a roaster who mails me a 250g bag of freshly-roasted, single origin coffee beans every week. To my taste, the beans are best within the first 20 days after roasting after which the aroma declines pretty quickly.

Sometimes, when I travel for instance, I end up with bags that I wasn't able to use by the time a fresher bag arrives. The older beans are not bad by any stretch-- in fact they are still far better than 99% of the beans that are sold in supermarkets which are generally a year old-- but I'd always rather use the fresher beans to make coffee if I have the choice.

Are there any good recipes or preparations that could put these once-fresh beans to good use?

Would you consider other storage methods that might extend freshness (such as these questions on storing whole bean, or ground, or freezing, or even freezing already-brewed coffee)? See more tagged [tag:storage]. Or bake some in a chocolate cake! There's plenty of space for more answers on this! — hoc_age, Mar 27 '15 at 12:33
Buy yourself a vacuum sealer. They are easy to use and excellent money-savers as they preserve food for much longer periods. I recently vacuum sealed 1kg coffee into 100g packs. They can then also be frozen to preserve them even longer. — user918, Jun 10 '15 at 11:34
I think you're suggesting proactive preservation rather than salvaging stale beans. Vacuum-packing beans isn't generally a good idea, especially for freshly-roasted beans. Another question of yours has more information and answers on vaccum and freezing. — hoc_age, Jun 11 '15 at 11:54

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:51

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One option is a somewhat obscure preparation method, but one that works best with older-ish beans: Nel drip (nel pot) preparation recommends beans that are a few weeks old; here's a Nel preparation guide from Blue Bottle. I don't know why older beans are recommended, except perhaps tradition.

See also other questions tagged nel-drip including another question of mine on Nel.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:51

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answered Mar 25 '15 at 21:15

hoc_age

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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 24 '15 at 03:53

Another option to quickly use coffee is cold-brew since it requires large amounts of coffee to produce a small amount of concentrate that lasts up to a week refrigerated.

I personally use this method to "finish" an older roast so that I can start using a fresher one for my other brewing methods.

Stumptown recommendation:

12 oz coffee + 56 oz H2O for 16 hours

Blue Bottle recommendation:

16 oz coffee + 2 liters H2O for 12 hours

Serious Eats recommendation:

8 oz coffee + 36 oz H2O for 12 hours

What is a good recipe for high quality coffee beans that are no longer fresh?

2 Answers2