Specialty coffee in Almería, freshly roasted

Roasted coffee is at its best between 3 and 21 days after roasting. From there it declines slowly but steadily.

Supermarket coffee spends weeks or months between roasting, distribution, warehouse and shelf. By the time it reaches your cup that window closed long ago. It isn't bad coffee: it's old coffee, and in the cup that means flat aroma and a cardboard undertone.

Buying from a roaster in the province, delivery takes a day or two. That's the real advantage of local roasting, and it's logistics rather than romance.

Almost all the storage advice you'll read is written for temperate climates. This isn't one, and that has real consequences: an Almería kitchen in August comfortably sits around 30 degrees, and at that temperature coffee degrades considerably faster than generic guides suggest.

• Buy smaller quantities more often. The kilo is better value, but if it takes two months to finish, the last third no longer tastes like what you paid for.
• Keep it in a low, interior cupboard, away from the oven and hob. The cupboard above the hob is the worst spot in the kitchen.
• Always check the roast date. Coffee roasted three months ago, here and in summer, is old coffee even in a sealed bag.

Online with delivery across Spain. We dispatch within 24-72 hours of roasting, so you don't need to live near the roastery to drink freshly roasted coffee.

Monthly subscription. If your consumption is steady, it solves the freshness problem at its root: the lot is roasted and dispatched rather than waiting on a shelf.

For hospitality in the province. Volume rates, machine loan and dialling in on your own machine, with more frequent deliveries so coffee doesn't age in your store room.