FAQs

Nope. See our “notes on roasting with wood.”

Good question, and not an easy one to answer. We vacuum seal and nitrogen flush our retail coffee in order to help with shelf stability, but this assistance ends once a bag is opened. We’ve often said two weeks for top notch, and two months for tasty enough, and this is still a decent rule to go by. But the reality is that many coffees have a “top notch” window quite a bit longer than two weeks—three to four is more likely–while darker roasts (like Sock Saunders) that may show a bit of oil on some beans can oxidize and exhibit some staleness before the “two months for tasty enough” timeline ends. You may also find that a coffee’s grind setting needs to be tightened as it ages, in order to increase contact time between your water and coffee during brewing. We’ll also say that we sometimes open a bag that’s been kicking around for half a year, and find it to get the job done pleasantly enough. So, don’t go overboard with your purchasing, but don’t panick if you don’t go through it super quickly. It’s gonna taste alright.

Hmmm. Another good question. If you are using it within a few weeks, it doesn’t really matter all that much. Keep it out of the sunlight, or any environment where it may come into contact with humidity, and you should be fine. If you’re storing it for a month or longer, you might find ways to minimize oxygen contact, as this is what ages—i.e. stales–the coffee itself. Vacuum canisters with one way valves can help with this. And for longer-term storage, there’s the freezer. We must confess to not having experimented with this for a while, but at least theoretically, double bagging your coffee (this is important) and freezing it will prevent it from being degraded by oxygen. But if it’s not double bagged, putting it in a freezer (where it can get burned, and come into contact with other substances) is a mistake. And once it comes out of the freezer, it should stay out. Please note: putting your coffee in the fridge is the biggest storage mistake you can make. It’s full of moisture, and your coffee might absorb the smell of your loosely-wrapped wedge of bleu cheese, and the Kung Pao chicken from last week.

All of our OG blends are certified organic, as are many of our single origin offerings. (Our website descriptions will indicate if a coffee comes with organic certification.) This fact is significant and, we think, important. We’ve been doing this since 2007, and it takes a boatload of sourcing work and extra expense on our end to find and purchase certified organic coffees that are up to snuff, quality-wise, for maintaining the levels of tasty excellence we (and you!) are accustomed to finding in our blends. You may hear from other roasters that organic certification is BS, or that most of their coffee is organic by default anyway. This is simply not true, and it ticks us off when these roasters, who can’t be bothered to spend time (let alone money) on learning about organic protocols at the farm level, or pay organic premiums and institute organic handling plans in their roasteries, and then pooh pooh the hard work of folks committed to the practice. We have spoken with farmers about, and been witness to, the labor involved in preserving the health of their land, while simultaneously producing quality coffee without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or fungicides. It is mind-blowing, and humbling, and drives home the point that casual dismissal of organic certification by roasters is disrespectful and ignorant. Third party, organically-certified coffee can help farms move to actual sustainability, by protecting area water quality through minimizing run-off, providing a healthy habitat for wildlife, and minimizing chemical input contact for farm workers.

That said, we also roast numerous, mostly microlot quality “conventional” coffees (that is, coffees without organic certification) from producers whose coffee and work we value. Most of these producers minimize chemical inputs in their attempt to grow the best coffee possible. And while we priviledge organics, coffee farming—the practice itself, and the economics involved in the trade—is a complex practice. Far be it from us to criticize folks on the ground and the choices they make in the pursuit of a living, especially when the balance of power in the coffee trade almost always weighs on the side of roasters and consumers.

Yes! And they are third-party certified as such. (You can check that out HERE.) Please note, though: they break down only in commercial composting facilities. (These bags have to be sturdy enough to travel and keep coffee fresh and stable on a shelf, so most home composting systems generally do not achieve high enough temps and rotation to facilitate breakdown. But if you’re an ace composter, feel free to give it a try, and let us know about your results.) Remove the circular one-way degassing valve and tin tie, and they are good to go. But you should always check with your local composting facility to make sure that their protocols are compatible with the parameters set forth in our material’s certification.

We are currently shipping most residential orders via USPS Advantage, with travel times generally spanning 2-5 days. On occasion we will ship via UPS Ground or Fedex. Please let us know if your address requires a particular shipping carrier.

We roast all coffee to order, and while we roast Monday through Thursday morning, not every coffee is roasted every day. Orders placed by Monday generally ship out early to mid-week, while orders placed at the end of a week will not be shipped until the following week. (For example, an order placed on 2:00 PM Thursday will not ship until the following Monday or Tuesday, depending on coffee(s) ordered.) Your order is shipped on the day we are able to complete it with freshly roasted coffee.

Take lots of pictures of the damage—the package that it was shipped in, and the coffee itself—and contact us. In most cases, we will file a claim with UPS or the postal service ourselves, and send you a replacement.

To start, please check in with your neighbors to see if the carrier left it at the wrong door or box. We’ve found this to be the case in many instances of coffee going AWOL, and it’s a phenomenon that is, unfortunately, becoming more common. If your package still does not turn up after a few days, contact us and we will try to figure out a solution. Please understand that neither USPS or UPS refunds us (for lost goods or shipping costs) when we send replacement items; re-sending orders results in considerable financial loss for our small business, and our roastery in Portland has no control over a package that goes missing from a stoop in Stamford, or a common area in Columbus. We may ask you for an alternative address or require a secure location before shipping any replacement items. And in certain instances (or multiple shipments going missing), we may decide that we can no longer sell coffee to you.

We only ship fresh coffee, and provide what we think are accurate descriptions as to the general qualities of our coffees, and so consider all coffee sales final. That said, we do want you to be happy with what you purchase from us. While taste is fairly subjective, and we cannot guarantee that you will love everything we roast, if our coffee does not meet your expectations for quality, reach out and we’ll try to figure out a way to make you happy, either by refunding a portion of the sale, sending you a replacement, or adding additional coffee to a pending order, at our discretion. But please don’t order an anaerobic natural if fruity coffee isn’t your thing.

The few non-coffee items that we sell (manual brewers and the like) are relatively low-tech, but come with factory warranties. Problems with these items should be resolved by contacting the manufacturer.