Pre-ground coffee and freshly ground coffee: Which one is better?
Coffee is the most consumed beverage worldwide. It is also one of the healthiest drinks because it is full of antioxidants, which promote alertness and cognitive function. Without milk and sugar, coffee itself is quite low in calories.
For Specialty Coffee enthusiasts, they are familiar with the concepts of freshly ground coffee and pre-ground coffee. Still, do they really know which one is better than the other? If you’re having the same question, let’s see when it makes sense to grab a bag of pre-ground coffee instead of grinding your own in this article.
Why do we need to grind coffee before processing?
Coffee before being brewed should be ground, finely ground, or coarsely ground, depending on the needs of the user, thus helping to increase the surface area of the roasted coffee beans. From there, it helps the beans come into contact with more water, allowing the bean compounds to dissolve into the water faster and to be extracted more.
However, if ground coffee is left for a long time, there will be negative changes to their quality.
Factors affecting the quality of ground coffee
Oxidation causes coffee to lose its smell
As you probably know when roasting, the complex compounds in the coffee beans will combine to create aroma, and these compounds are very volatile, which is the main cause of the loss of aroma of coffee. get high.
Therefore, the use of specialized storage bags after roasting is essential to avoid coffee being directly exposed to the air.
Humidity causes coffee to go rancid
This is inevitable because there is moisture in the air and in coffee there are lipid oils that can easily dissolve with water.
Coffee will start to appear rancid when exposed to air for a long time. If you’re not careful, improperly storing coffee can cause them to quickly lose most of their CO2 and this will only cause your pre-ground coffee to spoil faster.
Is there a way to save the pre-ground coffee flavor?
Surely when reading it here, many of you want to find a way to prevent the spoiling process of pre-ground coffee beans. Unfortunately, nothing can be done, but we can slow that process down considerably.
What you need to do is minimize your coffee’s exposure to environmental factors. High temperature and humidity will affect the maintenance of coffee flavor. The ideal way to store pre-ground coffee is to store them in airtight, vacuum-sealed containers at room temperature, avoiding the refrigerator.
If you buy in small quantities and properly store pre-ground coffee, you can still make a delicious cup of coffee every morning.
So, is freshly ground coffee better than pre-ground coffee?
In short, if you don’t want your coffee to lose its flavor quickly, use whole beans, and grind just before brewing. Because each coffee bean is like a hero helping to protect the entire grain structure inside, but when you grind the coffee, you create countless surfaces through which air can penetrate. This debris will interact with the air molecules faster and cause an exponential loss of smell.
