Protecting the flavors : freshness as a key to quality

Since the early days of the specialty coffee movement, freshness has been one of its central pillars. Freshness is best defined as having original unimpaired qualities. In coffee, it is most often seen as freshly roasted, ground within a few days, immediately extracted, and consumed. But despite this pivotal role of freshness for high quality coffee, the objective and scientific measurement of freshness have often been vague and elusive. How can one measure the level of freshness of coffee? In this chapter we will outline two approaches. One is based on the degassing of the freshly roasted coffee and the other on the evolution of its aroma profile during storage. In terms of the evolution of the aroma profile, we will introduce one particular freshness index: the ratio of dimethyl disulfide to methanethiol, suited to assess the evolution of freshness of roasted coffee during storage. Although this ratio has been shown to increase during storage, the speed at which this freshness index increases depends on the packaging and storage temperature. This has opened the possibility to use this index to assess the freshness of roasted coffee and compare the quality of different packaging materials for preserving the freshness of the coffee inside.