Patience

How do you drink your coffee???

Me, with patience. That's what you need in a 3rd wave espresso bar. Every other week new coffees/beans come in and the first thing you want to do is testing it. By cupping or throwing it directly into a grinder for espresso or by press pot, filter, whatever.... But patience needs to be your friend. First of all the coffee beans need to breath out all the gasses from the roasting. Not for health issues, but for taste reasons.

You see the taste of a bean changing from day to day, but the biggest change is within the first week. Where the coffee tastes too heavy, perfumed, bitter and wild the first days, it all comes together between the 4th and 7th day (plus minus).

Sometimes we do already some cupping after day one, just to get a first impression and to see how it's changing over the first days. Mostly it's the Friday roast that's tested Monday and if we are really in need for a new bean/blend, we start pulling espresso's from Tuesday on. Then we notice a lot of changes within the first three weeks, after which the top tastes and details are out and everything is sold. But that's the maximum stretch we do. Normally we count on selling everything within the first two weeks, so people can drink it within the first three weeks and than a new one can take the place.

Last Saturday our new Brazil Daterra Bourbon Collection came in. Oh God, it was hard the first days, waiting for the bean to hit its top. Patience my friend, patience is your best friend.

Nice article about the subject is this one from Linus/Coffee Collective.

Oh yes ; the Daterra is, as always, devine.