Mark wrote:

> Fresh-roasted coffee is so much better than pre-roasted.
> Once you get used to it, you'll never go back. And if
> you're the least bit paranoid about what goes into your
> food, you'll want the option of picking out all the
> disgusting stuff that normally occurs in raw coffee.
> (Really ugly, moldy, beans. Bits of plastic, etc.)
> No commercial roaster is going to pick that stuff out
> for you.

A recently-aired episode of "America's Test Kitchen" featured a coffee
tasting. The upshot of the tasting was that all brands contained a certain
number of beans which didn't belong in the bag, either because they weren't
roasted properly or they had some other problems. The quality of the coffee
was dramatically better when all those beans were picked out before
grinding. Considering that I only make coffee occasionally, it wouldn't be
any big deal to dump out a bag of roasted coffee beans onto a sheet pan,
pick out all the bad beans, and return the remainder to the bag. But I buy
Starbucks beans anyway, which turned out to be the brand with the fewest
defective beans in the trial.

Bob