Storage and Brewing Tips Cobblestone Coffee Roastery is passionate about fresh roasted coffee. It's our passion; it's our mission. We're so passionate, in fact, that we've taken great efforts to ensure quality in the roast by crafting our coffees the old fashioned way. Our roasting techniques are the same as the ones the old coffee masters used to do it back in the old days when the streets were paved with cobblestones. We craft our coffees by hand, in small batches, with a passion for quality and freshness unmatched by the big name mass producers. We take the finest coffees the world has to offer, and take our time to craft roast each of them to their own individual perfection. Maximizing each coffee's individual flavor characteristics is an art that takes time, patience, skill, and experience; an art that is almost non existent in the coffees found in your grocery store. We've taken every step to maintain quality and preserve the freshness of our coffees along their way to the individual bags we provide you with, but the effort to maintain quality in the coffee shouldn't stop here! We now pass the torch that represents our passion for quality on to you... Here are some suggestions for you to follow to preserve your coffee's freshness at home or work: ~ Pace Yourself. If convenient, purchase only as much fresh coffee as you will use in a week. The closer you can brew your coffee to the date it was roasted, the fresher it will be in your cup. Buy next weeks coffee next week, and so on. ~ Keep A Lid On It. After a bag has been opened, keep the coffee in an air tight container. It's critical to keep oxygen, moisture, and light away from your coffee. ~ Grind Just Before You Brew. This is the single most effective way to improve your coffee experience at home or work. I can't stress this one enough. Coffee stays fresher in its whole bean form. Grinding your coffee too soon increases its surface area exposure to oxygen, which will stale the coffee tremendously faster than whole bean coffee. I beg you to invest in a gravity fed burr grinder, and grind just before you brew. ~ One Grind Does NOT Fit All. To prevent under-development or over-extraction of the flavor compounds in your coffee, grind specifically for YOUR OWN filter and/or brewer. A coffee ground for a french press is not the same grind for drip paper filters, or espresso for example. Your grind is determined by the amount of time that your coffee will be in contact with the water in the brew cycle. Each brewing method is different, each filter is different. Grind accordingly. ~ Maintain Proper Coffee-to-Water Ratio. For most drip coffee makers, we recommend starting with 10 grams of coffee (one standard coffee scoop) per 6oz. of water. ~ Use Quality Water. Another important one here. Water represents more than 98% or your beverage. Use fresh, filtered, or even bottled water. If you can't stand the taste of the water your brewing with, what do you expect will happen to your brewed coffee? Don't blame us, we warned you. ~ Do Not Refrigerate! Fresh coffee is an odor magnet, even when it is stored in an air tight container. Please do not subject your fresh coffee to the odors of the contents within your fridge. Unless that is, you enjoy that suble hint of raw onion and leftover chicken in your morning brew... you get the point. Keep a week's worth or less of your coffee dry and air tight at room temp. Freeze any excess coffee, and thaw before you grind, never grind frozen beans! Follow these suggestions, and I assure you your cup will be the best it can be at home. Sit back, relax, sip, and enjoy great coffee from Cobblestone Coffee Roastery!