[BostonCard]

I thought of this thread back in April when I was in Detroit, of all places. I stumbled on a pretty cool coffee shop in downtown called Roasting Plant. (http://roastingplant.com/) It features beans from around the world, roasted on site, and when you order your coffee, the beans fly over your head in vacuum tubes from the roasting bins to the grinder. I'm not a coffee expert, but my son and I definitely loved the show.

I believe that there is a similar place in Berkeley.  The problem, unfortunately, is that that there is such a thing as "too fresh" when it comes to roasted coffee.  Going straight from the roaster to the grinder is bad for coffee.  Freshly roasted coffee needs some time to off-gas. The roasting process generates carbon dioxide (and other volatile compounds), which takes a while to dissipate, usually between 48 hours and a couple weeks depending on the roast.  For most coffee roasts, I find the sweet spot is about 5 days.  That's almost never an issue for coffee made at home, but can be a bit of a logistics issue for coffee houses, and the micro-"freshly roasted" beans you get from a place like the one you mentioned can actually taste worse

BC

[BostonCard]

I thought of this thread back in April when I was in Detroit, of all places. I stumbled on a pretty cool coffee shop in downtown called Roasting Plant. (http://roastingplant.com/) It features beans from around the world, roasted on site, and when you order your coffee, the beans fly over your head in vacuum tubes from the roasting bins to the grinder. I'm not a coffee expert, but my son and I definitely loved the show.

I believe that there is a similar place in Berkeley.  The problem, unfortunately, is that that there is such a thing as "too fresh" when it comes to roasted coffee.  Going straight from the roaster to the grinder is bad for coffee.  Freshly roasted coffee needs some time to off-gas. The roasting process generates carbon dioxide (and other volatile compounds), which takes a while to dissipate, usually between 48 hours and a couple weeks depending on the roast.  For most coffee roasts, I find the sweet spot is about 5 days.  That's almost never an issue for coffee made at home, but can be a bit of a logistics issue for coffee houses, and the micro-"freshly roasted" beans you get from a place like the one you mentioned can actually taste worse

BC