Don't waste your money on preground coffee

OK. Coffee is pretty popular here in Finland. It’s actually so popular that Finland is ranked either as the first or second in terms of coffee consumption per capita depending on which stats you look at.

We drink coffee, we depend on it. And as always these days, hipsters want to resurrect everything that is a niche or different. Beer microbreweries, vinyl records and beards, you name it. The same happened to coffee. We’ve seen a great spurt of new independent microroasteries appearing left and right, roasting expensive speciality coffee.

And that’s great! It means I don’t have to go out on my way to get a good cup of joe around here these days. But there are some people who don’t understand the concept of quality coffee. People who take their Pumpkin Spice with a dozen pumps of syrup or people who pre-grind their coffee at the store.

I think it’s perfectly acceptable to buy the “regular” coffee from the grocery store, pay some 8€ per kilogram or so and enjoy that. I do that too. Hell, I’d go broke if I’d only drink speciality coffee. I’m not an eliltist, if you enjoy your coffee, it’s good coffee.

But what I DON’T get, are people who buy speciality coffee for a premium price (40€/kg or more) and grind it in the store. Ok, if you plan on cycling home in 10 minutes and prepare all the coffee you just bought at once, it’d be okay. But if you end up with beans you grinded more than half an hour ago, you fucked up.

‘But it was just roasted yesterday’

No, you fucked up. I would rather drink coffee that was roasted a year ago but grinded just before brewing than letting my freshly roasted beans get stale. Why would you pay 5x the price for coffee you’re gonna let go bad? Stick with your Keurig or capsule coffees, you’ll get your moneys worth.

Less is lost with whole roasted beans than grinded beans. The difference is huge. I can easily drink a cup that was roasted several months ago and stored in an airtight jar and say that it’s delicious. Not so much for that super expensive Geisha pregrounded coffee that costed an arm and a leg.

If you truly want to enjoy good coffee at home, you NEED to invest in a grinder. No, your smoothie blender isn’t good enough nor is that crappy piece of an excuse coffee grinder with metal blades. Get any burr grinder, like the Hario Minimill you can snatch for $22. It’ll beat your $100 electric grinder any day.

If you’re not grinding your expensive beans yourself just before brewing, you’re either dumb, under false assumption that it’s okay or just generally okay with throwing your money in /dev/null. Stop it.