Whole Bean Coffee: Fresh Roasted Single Origins & Blends
Every coffee we carry, in whole bean. Single origins and blends, light through dark, from roasters who date their bags.
Why whole bean is worth the extra minute
Coffee holds its aromatics inside the bean. Grind it and you multiply the surface area enormously, and those aromatic compounds start escaping within minutes. That's not marketing, it's just chemistry, and it's why a cup from beans ground thirty seconds ago smells and tastes noticeably better than the same coffee ground last week.
Pre-ground coffee is fine. It's just a coffee that's already given away most of what you paid extra for. If you're spending money on single-origin beans and then grinding them on Sunday for the week, you're mostly drinking the memory of them.
What you need to grind at home
A burr grinder, not a blade one. Blades smash beans into a mix of dust and boulders that extract at completely different rates, giving you bitter and sour in the same mouthful. Burrs mill everything to roughly the same size, which is the foundation of a consistent cup.
A decent hand grinder costs less than two bags of good coffee and takes about a minute of cranking. An electric burr grinder costs more and saves you the minute. Either beats the best blade grinder made.
Grind size by brew method
- Coarse, like sea salt, for French press and cold brew
- Medium, like sand, for drip and most pour-over
- Medium-fine for V60 and AeroPress
- Fine, like table salt or finer, for espresso
Grind right before you brew, and only what you're about to use.
How much to buy
Coffee is at its best from a few days to about three weeks after roasting. For most daily drinkers that's a 12oz bag. Bigger bags are better value only if you'll actually finish them in that window, and if you do buy big, split it into airtight containers and open one at a time.
