What is Degassing
Roasting a coffee beans causes a lot of chemical changes to the coffee bean itself. When coffee is roasted, many chemical and physical reactions take place inside the bean. This leads to the formation of gases, one of which is carbon dioxide (CO2). While the beans lose some CO2 during roasting, a large percentage of them are gradually released over the days that follow.
Degassing is a natural reaction that begins once the coffee is roasted. Degassing is the process of letting your roasted coffee beans rest, so the gas that has built up during the roasting process gets released into the air rather than your cup.
Degassing is very vital for the coffee to open up its flavours, it ensures that the coffee will be aromatic as well as balanced as intended by the time it reaches you legends.
What happens when you brew freshly roasted coffee?
The fresher your coffee, you would experience more CO2 gases escaping from your brew in one form or the other. This is why it’s important to wet your coffee on any manual brewing equipment where you notice the bloom ( little pockets of bubbles on the coffee bed when water is added for the first time indicating CO2 being released out of the coffee). However, if your coffee is too fresh, regardless of how you brew your coffee, the extraction will still be uneven due to the overwhelming amount of CO2 escaping during the entire brewing process.
You may notice a similar Crema on top of your espresso brew’s which too is an indicator of the Freshness or amount of CO2 trapped in the coffee.
What happens once beans have degassed?
Much like a fine wine, freshly roasted coffee gets better with time…well, to an extent. After the first few days of degassing, oxygen starts to make its way into your beans. This is called oxidation and is the main cause of staleness. A way to prolong the flavor of your coffee is to store it in a container with a one-way valve. This way, CO2 is able to escape, and oxygen won’t as easily find its way in.
How Does Corridor Seven Keep Your Coffee Fresh?
While it’s important that we let our coffees properly degas, it’s equally important to make sure we prevent them from becoming stale. At Corridor Seven, as soon as the coffee has cooled & degassed, the beans are immediately packed into our coffee bags with valves. Our Coffee bags have valves in order to let the freshly roasted coffee degas until it reaches you. Coffee valves let CO2 out without letting oxygen in to spoil or oxidize the coffee. It helps the coffee beans to stay perfectly fresh for a long time, giving you ample time to enjoy your coffee at its peak.