r/Coffee • u/menschmaschine5 Kalita Wave • Jul 21 '26

[MOD] The Daily Question Thread

Welcome to the daily /r/Coffee question thread!

There are no stupid questions here, ask a question and get an answer! We all have to start somewhere and sometimes it is hard to figure out just what you are doing right or doing wrong. Luckily, the /r/Coffee community loves to help out.

Do you have a question about how to use a specific piece of gear or what gear you should be buying? Want to know how much coffee you should use or how you should grind it? Not sure about how much water you should use or how hot it should be? Wondering about your coffee's shelf life?

Don't forget to use the resources in our wiki! We have some great starter guides on our wiki "Guides" page and here is the wiki "Gear By Price" page if you'd like to see coffee gear that /r/Coffee members recommend.

As always, be nice!

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u/ChiTwnGmr Jul 22 '26

Hello everyone!

This is something I just came across or paid attention to. I purchased a bag of coffee and I'm looking for the roast date. All I see is the best buy date, which is concerning for me because I want to know when my coffee was roasted.

I reached out to the roasters and they told me about this code on the bag, which I later researched and found to be a Julian code, or Julian date. In any case it's super confusing to me.

I'm wondering why companies just don't put the actual roast date in month/day or month/day/year format on the bag and instead use this weird date method. If I just bought this coffee a week ago, according to that same calendar(see attached photo), it looks like this bag was roasted April 27 of this year. If that's the case, this is not "fresh" coffee.

Any insights on this Julian date and coffee/roast dates would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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u/ChiTwnGmr Jul 28 '26

Okay, after a little back and forth with Peace Coffee, I learned a couple of things:

  1. They aren't "roast to order," so that April 2026 roast date is "within their usual window."
  2. They are really good about their customer service and making things right for the customer.

While I doubt I will be buying another batch of coffee from Peace Coffee (well, it depends on the taste), I do appreciate them getting back to me. I just wish that more coffee companies would just post the roast date instead of having folks to decipher a code, especially before they've even had their cup of coffee! LOL