Roasted coffee beans are best when they are fresh, and not as tasty when they start to go bad. Coffee beans don’t go bad by growing mold (at least not normally) because there’s very little moisture content left in the bean after they are roasted, But they do go stale.

Once the coffee beans are roasted they start releasing carbon dioxide and slowly start to go stale. The chemicals in the bean start to transform, the cell structure of the bean starts to degrade. After some time the best flavors of the beans start to become bitter and dull.

Roasted coffee is only at peak freshness for 2-3 weeks.
For drip and pour over coffee, you want to try and use the beans in the first 2-14 days, and for Pressurized coffee extraction, 7-21 days.

How old is your Coffee? Comment below! (Hint: most coffee doesn’t have a roast date, just a best by date, which can be up to a YEAR after they were roasted.)

Coffee goes stale due to oxygen. The more something is exposed to oxygen, the faster it will break down. After that first 2-3 weeks, the delicate, complex flavors of the coffee start to decline rapidly.

So if you find coffee on the shelf from a year ago, you can drink it, but it’s not going to be what it once was.