Roast days, freshness and grind
Roast Days:
We roast 3 days a week; Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If you place your order before midnight on Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday - we’ll roast and ship it the next roast day. IF you order on the roast day itself, we usually have to ship in on the following roast day, but if we find ourselves able to ship it earlier than that - we will do.
Shipping:
We offer free shipping on all orders over £15 delivered by Royal Mail Tracked 48 service.
Freshness:
We will ship coffee up to 14 days after it has been roasted - here’s why:
Coffee freshness is a hot topic amongst roasters and coffee lovers. Some people insist that it can only be good coffee if it’s so fresh it’s still warm from the roaster - others prefer it left weeks or even months from roast before it’s used. Let me explain what I think and why.
I’ve worked in coffee for almost 20 years - a lot of the last 10 years of that has been in roasteries assessing coffee as part of a quality management team. Part of that has been shelf life testing of coffees at various ages after roast. I can tell you with some authority that coffee at 9 months old is stale and you can really tell - no matter how it has been packaged.
I can also tell you that I get the best flavours and quality from coffee somewhere between 10-30 days after roast. Before this, it’s too fresh, too gassy. It tastes a bit like popcorn (2-acetyl pyrazine) and soda water (carbon dioxide coming out of solution.) After 30 days I find it starts to get a bit stale and flat and I enjoy it less. I would recommend drinking coffee within 6-8 weeks from roast. The reason I put a 6 month best before date on my coffee is that if you’re the kind of coffee drinker who REALLY cares about coffee freshness - you’ll have drunk it way before that anyway; and if you’re the kind of coffee drinker who doesn’t, there’s no need to waste it if you’ll still get enjoyment from it. Also worth noting that coffee will not do you any harm even after the best before date, so you never need to throw it away based on a date on a bag.
Grind my Beans:
We offer our coffee 2 ways - Whole Bean and Ground. For Mjolka (and Nott Mjolka - Decaf), my 100% arabica dark roast blend, I also offer stovetop grind too.
Whole Bean is exactly what it says on the tin - Whole Beans. This is the best to keep your coffee nice and fresh, but you will need a grinder at home to go with it. You can pick up a really good, cheap hand grinder from Hario for about £45 (I sell them!) and this will definitely improve your home coffee quality.
Ground Coffee is a good all-rounder for most home brewing methods. It works for a cafetière (50g, 3 and a half minutes for an 8-cup) and a filter machine (or V60, Chemex, whatever.) Because it has a higher surface area than whole beans, it will go stale a bit quicker though.
Stovetop is ground for your home Moka Pot. It isn’t a true espresso grind, so I wouldn't recommend it for home espresso (you REALLY need a grinder to make the most of home espresso!) It will make a pretty good Moka Pot, but will stale pretty quickly I’m afraid, because the grind is super-fine, so it has a really large surface area.
So there you go - that’s pretty much all you need to know about Danelaw Coffee - you should now be in a position to go ahead and place your first order (if you haven’t already!)
Thankyou - and remember - if you have any questions, we’re always happy to help.
