How Fresh is Starbucks Whole Bean Coffee?
Dear Mr. Coffee,I would like to know more about Starbucks and their whole bean coffee. If you ever get answers to these questions in your travels I would love to know:1. How fresh is their whole bean coffee that is on the shelf? How long ago was it roasted?2. How far does the coffee travel after it is roasted, or perhaps more specifically, how many regional roasters does Starbucks operate? Is it all roasted out of Seattle (unlikely), or if it is roasted regionally, where are it's 'hubs'?I just bought Starbuck's Sumatra Dark as per your excellent quiz, but I'm looking at the bag wondering how fresh it is.- Jacques
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Answer:
Jacques, thanks for the kind words and the great questions. If anybody hasn't checked out the new Coffee Quiz, what you are waiting for?! Check it out by clicking here.
When I first moved from pre-ground grocery store coffee in a big tin can, to whole bean coffee that I would grind myself before each brew many years ago, I figured the logical place to turn was Starbucks. For quite a while, the stop at Starbucks to get whole bean coffee was a regular stop for me.
How fresh is their coffee on the shelf? Who knows?! Like a good local roaster does, they have no roast date on their packaging. This is likely for two reasons. One, because they must not want you to know. And two, because it might introduce the added management of only having same roast dates on display at one time - otherwise, customers might only buy the freshest coffees while the others would certainly go stale. Having said that, I'm not suggesting that Starbucks whole bean coffee is stale. Only that it is likely less fresh than the coffee from a roaster who prints the roast date on the packaging.
How far does their coffee travel from roasting? Starbucks roasts its coffee in Kent, Washington, just outside of Seattle; in Nevada, where I believe most of their roasting is done; in Pennsylvania, also Starbucks' largest distribution center; and finally in South Carolina. From these four roasting plants, Starbucks roasts millions of pounds of coffee on a weekly basis to service the brewing in their retail locations, their wholesale business - for example, the Starbucks brand coffee sold in grocery stores and the Seattle's Best Coffee sold in fast food restaurants - and the whole bean coffee sold in their stores and over their website. Again, there's no way to know when it is roasted, but you can estimate travel time by how far you bought it from the closest of the four locations above.
The other consideration is of proper roast level, and Starbucks is known to "over-roast" many of their coffees. The Coffee Quiz takes into account a suggested roast level for a coffee based on its origin. If the Coffee Quiz recommended a certain coffee and you bought it from Starbucks, it may be more roasted than we had in mind when we recommended that coffee to you.
I hope this helps. Starbucks is conveniently everywhere, and I do believe their store employees handle whole bean coffee better than the employees of a grocery store. For that reason, I would buy bulk coffee from a Starbucks before I would buy it from a grocery store.