My Kind of Freeganism

Free Coffee

First, let me say that I didn’t take this out of the trash. I didn’t jump into a dumpster and fish it out from a stack of stale muffins.

Nope, I have a source at one of the dozens of Stumptown brewing outlets here in New York, and evidently, they had some overage. It turns out that Stumptown won’t let any of their vendors sell brewed coffee from beans that were roasted more than two weeks ago. (For the uninitiated, “two-week” old coffee is hardly old so that’s a pretty good commitment to freshness, although that explains the high retail price.)

Anyway, said source came through with a bag of the coffee that was a wee bit past Stumptown’s own freshness standards. If the “1/26” on the bag is the discard date, that means it was roasted around January 12. (The date could also be the roasting date, in which case that’s even better.) Generally speaking, any coffee that’s less than two months past roasting is good to go as long its kept at room temperature and in an air tight container. By the looks of it, there’s about 2 1/2 pounds left of the 5 lb. bag. Usually, I brew about 12 oz of coffee beans each week, meaning that I’ll have to pick up the pace to finish it by March 12.

But the best news is that this bag will save me about $50 in Stumptown coffee beans, and untold sums of money over buying brewed coffee.